字处理

Word Processing

文字处理是一个有着复杂历史的概念。在文字处理器成为像 Microsoft Word 这样的软件包之前，它是一种特殊的计算机。但在此之前，文字处理器是办公室工作人员，文字处理是一种像工厂流水线一样运行的打字池的概念。在美国管理协会和一本名为《行政管理》的鲜为人知的刊物开始推广这一理念后，这一理念得到了广泛的关注。公司在专业设备上投入了大量资金，以提高制造工人的生产力。相比之下，办公室工作仍然效率低下。据美国管理协会称，文字处理可以解决这个问题。私人秘书将被取消，他们的工作将转移到中央打字池的文字处理器上。这种更高的工作量将证明对昂贵技术的投资是合理的，从而进一步提高他们的生产力^。2

Word processing is a concept with a complicated history. Before a word processor was a software package, like Microsoft Word, it was a special kind of computer. But before even that, a word processor was an office worker and word processing was an idea about typing pools that ran like factory assembly lines. That idea gained traction after the American Management Association and an obscure publication called Administrative Management began to promote it. Companies had invested large sums in specialized equipment to make their manufacturing workers more productive. Office work, in contrast, remained inefficient. According to the American Management Association, word processing could solve this. Personal secretaries would be eliminated and their work transferred to word processors in a central typing pool. This higher volume of work would justify investment in expensive technology, further boosting their productivity.²

文字处理的概念最初与机器有关，但并非与计算机有关。1971 年，IBM 开始在广告中将其口述机和自动打字机称为“文字处理机”。当时，其最先进的办公设备是 MTST，它是 Selectric 打字机的近亲，可以在磁带盒上存储和调用按键序列。这个短语起源于 IBM 打字机销售员、前德国战斗机飞行员 Ulrich Steinhilper。Seinhilper 声称自己在 20 世纪 50 年代想出了这个短语，当时他意识到 IBM 的新数据处理部门正在抢走他的办公机器的风头^。3

The word processing idea was tied to machinery, but not originally to computers. In 1971 IBM began to call its dictating machines and automatic typewriters “word processing machines” in its advertisements. At that point its most advanced office device was the MTST—a cousin of its Selectric typewriter that could store and recall sequences of keystrokes on a magnetic tape cartridge. The phrase originated with IBM typewriter salesman and former German fighter pilot Ulrich Steinhilper. Seinhilper claims to have come up with it in the 1950s, when he realized that IBM’s new data processing division was stealing the spotlight from his office machines.³

直到 20 世纪 70 年代早期，这一术语才开始广泛使用，当时 Cuisinart 的食品加工机开始出现在美国厨房中。到那时，交互式计算的成本下降使得使用计算机存储、编辑和打印各种文本更具成本效益。从麻省理工学院的黑客及其“昂贵的打字机”程序开始，程序员就喜欢在线编辑他们的程序。这些技术还使交互式编辑信件和报告成为可能，但计算机在 20 世纪 60 年代的办公室工作中并不经济。这是理论和实践普遍性之间区别的另一个例证。并不是每个人都预见到这种情况会发生变化：一些负责 ASCII 标准的委员会成员认为小写字母的代码是在浪费空间^。4

The term was not widely used until the early-1970s, taking off just as Cuisinart’s food processors began to appear in American kitchens. By this point, the falling cost of interactive computing was making it more cost effective to use computers to store, edit, and print various kinds of text. From the MIT hackers, with their “expensive typewriter” program, onward, programmers had loved to edit their programs online. Those technologies also made it possible to edit letters and reports interactively, but computers weren’t economically viable for 1960s office work. This is another illustration of the distinction between theoretical and practical universality. Not everyone foresaw that this would ever change: some members of the committee working on the ASCII standard argued that codes for lower-case letters were a waste of space.⁴

法律文件是计算机文本编辑的第一个大市场，因为它们很复杂，经过多次起草，而且投入了大量资金。回想一下，贝尔实验室资助了 Unix 的开发，以支持其专利小组的工作。为办公工作而设计的文本编辑系统市场与个人电脑爱好者市场分开但平行地发展。该模板由 Vydec 于 1973 年设定，这是一家由前惠普工程师领导的初创公司，它提供了第一个能够在屏幕上显示整页文本、将其存储在软盘上并打印的系统。它最近发明了小巧且相对实惠的菊轮打印机，以旋转以打出正确字母的磁盘命名。这可以产生打字机质量的输出，尽管速度慢且噪音大。

Legal documents were the first big market for computer text editing, as they were complicated, went through many drafts, and had lots of money attached to them. Recall that Bell Labs funded the development of Unix to support the work of its patent group. The market for text editing systems designed for office work grew separately but parallel to the enthusiast market for personal computers. The template was set in 1973 by Vydec, a start-up led by former Hewlett-Packard engineers, which offered the first system able to display a full page of text on screen, store it on floppy disk, and print it. Its small and relatively affordable daisywheel printer, a recent invention, was named after a disk that rotated to punch the correct letter. This produced typewriter-quality output, albeit slowly and noisily.

Vydec 的价格为 18,000 美元，使用小型计算机式电路来构建其中央处理器，价格昂贵。由于微处理器的出现和 RAM 芯片成本的迅速下降，到 1977 年，许多其他公司也进入了视频屏幕文字处理器市场，包括科罗拉多州的 NBI（“Nothing But Initials”）、亚特兰大的 Lanier 和明尼阿波利斯的 CPT。Lanier 最初是最成功的，但企业文字处理市场的最大份额最终被王安实验室夺走。

At $18,000 the Vydec, which used minicomputer-style circuits to build its central processor, was expensive. Thanks to the arrival of microprocessors and the rapidly falling cost of RAM chips, many other firms had entered the market for video screen word processors by 1977, including NBI (“Nothing But Initials”) in Colorado, Lanier in Atlanta, and CPT in Minneapolis. Lanier was initially the most successful, but the lion’s share of the corporate word processing market was eventually taken by Wang Labs.

王安实验室创始人王安博士敏锐地知道何时退出一个市场，进入一个即将开放的新市场。到 1971 年，该公司意识到其电子计算器正在成为一种商品，其微薄的利润率更多地取决于包装而不是技术创新。王安实验室凭借其 2200 型计算器跨界进入小型计算机领域。5^王博士随后带领公司进军文字处理领域。他的工程师们意识到，现有的系统让用户感到困惑。1981 年，前总统吉米·卡特在价值 12,000 美元的 Lanier No Problem [原文如此] 文字处理系统上按错了键，丢失了几页回忆录——“我花了好几天才写好”。他焦急地给 Lanier 打了个电话，拿出一个实用程序磁盘，让他能够从原始磁盘中恢复数据。6^王博士想出了一个设计，可以避免此类灾难的发生。命令可以通过一个简单的菜单屏幕访问^。7

Dr. An Wang, the founder of Wang Labs, had an astute sense of knowing when to get out of one market and into a new one about to open up. By 1971 the company recognized that its electronic calculators were becoming a commodity, with razor-thin profit margins dependent on packaging more than on technical innovation. Wang Labs made the crossover to minicomputers with its Model 2200 computing calculator.⁵ Dr. Wang then directed the company toward word processing. His engineers realized that existing systems confused their users. In 1981, ex-President Jimmy Carter lost a few pages of his memoirs—“I had labored over them for a couple of days”—by pressing the wrong key on his $12,000 Lanier No Problem [sic] word processing system. An anxious phone call to Lanier produced a utilities disk that allowed him to recover the data from the original diskette.⁶ Wang came up with a design that would make such disasters unlikely. Commands were accessed by a simple screen of menus.⁷

为了降低办公成本，王氏需要让多位用户共享昂贵的硬盘驱动器和打印机。分时小型计算机可以处理这个问题，但另一个要求是始终快速响应。当分时系统繁忙时，它们的响应会滞后。解决办法是将处理能力放在终端本身，中央计算机主要用于数据存储——这在 1975 年是一个激进的想法。王氏文字处理系统 (WPS) 如图8.1所示，于 1976 年 6 月在纽约的一次贸易展上亮相，据一些报道，该系统差点引发骚乱^。8

To keep costs viable for office work, Wang needed to share an expensive hard disk drive and printer among several users. A timesharing minicomputer could handle that, but another requirement was a consistently speedy response. When timesharing systems got busy, their response lagged. The answer was to put processing power into the terminal itself, with the central computer serving primarily for data storage—a radical idea in 1975. The Wang Word Processing System (WPS), shown in figure 8.1, was unveiled at a trade show in New York in June 1976 and, according to some accounts, nearly caused a riot.⁸

包括硬盘存储在内的王氏集群售价为 30,000 美元——通过集中打字工作，可以节省劳动力并改善服务，这个价格是合理的。其精美的包装和易于使用的菜单系统与同一时代的自组装个人计算机套件截然不同。1976 年，王氏实验室在数据处理收入方面排名第 45 位。1983 年，它上升到第八位，仅次于 IBM、DEC 和其他大型机公司。一位分析师称其为“办公自动化的东方快车”，并预测到 1990 年，王氏将占据该行业的第三名^。9

A Wang cluster, including hard disk storage, cost $30,000—a price justified by the promise of labor savings and service improvements achieved by centralizing typing work. Its polished packaging and easy-to-use menu system were a world away from the self-assembly personal computing kits of the same era. Wang Labs was ranked 45th in data processing revenues in 1976. It reached eighth place in 1983, just below IBM, DEC, and the remaining mainframe companies. Calling it the “Orient Express of office automation,” one analyst predicted that Wang would take the industry’s number-three spot by 1990.⁹

词星

WordStar

个人电脑的文字处理程序很快就问世了，但最初无法与专用系统的功能和精致程度相媲美。1979 年 6 月，随着 Rob Barnaby 编写的 WordStar 的问世，情况发生了改变。它包括内置帮助屏幕来指导用户、在屏幕上显示分页符信息和对齐（以产生整齐的右边距）等功能。即便如此，屏幕上显示的文本也几乎无法让人了解打印输出的格式。为了最大限度地利用潜在市场，WordStar 被设计为仅依赖于标准的 CP/M 功能。WordStar 不使用光标键，而是使用 Control-E 和 Control-D 等组合键，这些组合键保证在所有键盘上都有。CP/M 对许多硬件配置的支持的不利之处在于，配置 WordStar 和其他应用程序需要无休止地摆弄^。10

Word processing programs for personal computers arrived quickly, but initially failed to match the features and polish of the dedicated systems. That changed in June 1979 with the advent of WordStar, written by Rob Barnaby. It included capabilities such as built-in help screens to guide users, on-screen display of page break information, and justification (to produce a neat right margin). Even so, the text displayed on the screen gave little idea of how the printed output would be formatted. To maximize the potential market, WordStar was designed to rely only on standard CP/M capabilities. Instead of cursor keys WordStar used key combinations such as Control-E and Control-D, which were guaranteed to be present on all keyboards. The flipside of CP/M’s support for many hardware configurations was endless fiddling to configure WordStar and other application programs.¹⁰

马修·基尔申鲍姆 (Matthew Kirschenbaum ) 在他的文学文字处理史《追踪修订》一书中指出，科幻小说作家是文字处理最积极的采用者。他们必须多产才能谋生，并且对新技术有着天生的偏好。11^其中一位，杰里·普内尔，开始了第二份职业，为《字节》杂志撰写“混沌庄园”专栏。它逐渐发展成为一本大杂志中的一本小杂志，有自己的来信页面、评论和八卦。阅读它是体验当时个人计算的兴奋和沮丧的最直接方式之一。尝试让打印机、计算机和软件包的特定组合协同工作可能会变成一项艰巨的任务，需要写几页纸、打很多电话并请专家来解决。

In his history of literary word processing, Track Changes, Matthew Kirschenbaum suggests that science fiction writers were the most active adopters of word processing. They had to be prolific to make a living and had a natural predisposition toward new technology.¹¹ One of them, Jerry Pournelle, took up a second career writing the “Chaos Manor” column for Byte magazine. It grew to be a little magazine inside a big one, with its own letters page, reviews, and gossip. Reading it is one of the most immediate ways to experience the excitement and frustration of personal computing in this period. Trying to make a particular combination of printer, computer, and software package work together could turn into an epic quest taking several pages and many telephone calls and experts to solve.

Pournelle 将他的计算机变成了故事中的角色，就像家庭宠物一样。他最喜欢的是一台 CP/M 机器，他以 Z-80 处理器将其命名为 Zeke，据说这是第一台用于编写科幻小说的计算机。直到1983 年 5 月，Pournelle 写道：“你可以用与 IBM 相当的价格买到一个好的 S-100 系统，而我个人更喜欢更灵活的系统。……你可以用比其他任何东西都少的钱进行升级。” ¹² Pournelle 最终放弃了，Zeke 被陈列在史密森尼博物馆，但科幻小说作家、《权力的游戏》的作者 George RR Martin在 2014 年登上头条新闻，因为他透露他使用 WordStar 的旧版本来避免现代计算的视觉干扰。据 Martin 说，WordStar“做了我希望文字处理程序做的所有事情，它不做任何其他事情。” ¹³

Pournelle turned his computers into characters in the unfolding narrative, like family pets. His favorite was a CP/M machine he named Zeke, after its Z-80 processor, which was reportedly the first computer used to write a science fiction novel. As late as May 1983, Pournelle wrote “you can get a good S-100 system “for the price of a comparable IBM,” and I for one prefer the more flexible system.… You can upgrade for less than with anything else.”¹² Pournelle eventually moved on, and Zeke went on display in the Smithsonian, but fellow science fiction writer George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones, made headlines in 2014 when he revealed that he uses a vintage version of WordStar to avoid the visual distractions of modern computing. According to Martin, WordStar “does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn’t do anything else.”¹³

在 20 世纪 80 年代，CP/M 在廉价个人电脑（尤其是便携式系统）中仍然很受欢迎。第一款成功的便携式电脑是 1981 年发布的 Osborne 1。它看起来很像一台缝纫机：一个笨重的盒子，一端有一个把手（图 8.2）。松开锁扣可以拆下键盘，露出两个软盘驱动器和一个 5 英寸的小屏幕。它的便携性有限。Byte的评论者写道：“我怀疑我会像携带公文包那样携带 Osborne 1 ...... [它]重约 24 磅，除了最健壮的旅行者外，其他人都会筋疲力尽。”他还对市场营销声称它可以“放在飞机座位下”表示怀疑。这台机器并不是特别强大，但却非常划算，因为最初的 1,795 美元购买价包含 WordStar 和 Supercalc 电子表格程序。正如Byte总结的那样，“从某种意义上说，你得到的是一套软件包，而且是附赠的一台计算机，而且（几乎）免费。” ¹⁴

CP/M remained popular well into the 1980s for cheaper personal computers, particularly portable systems. The first successful portable was the Osborne 1, released in 1981. It looked a lot like a sewing machine: a bulky box with a handle on one end (figure 8.2). Releasing catches detached a keyboard to reveal two floppy disk drives and a tiny five-inch screen. Its portability was limited. Byte’s reviewer wrote “I doubt I would carry an Osborne 1 in the same way I would carry a briefcase … [it] weighs about 24 pounds which would tire out all but the most athletic of travelers.” He also expressed doubts about marketing claims that it could “fit under an airline seat.” The machine wasn’t particularly powerful but was an amazing deal because the initial $1,795 purchase price included WordStar and the Supercalc spreadsheet program. As Byte concluded, “in a way you are getting a software package with a computer thrown in for (almost) free.”¹⁴

奥斯本计算机公司于 1983 年破产。当时人们称其为“奥斯本效应”，因为它犯了一个错误，即在产品尚未准备好销售时就宣布了一款性能更优越的替代产品。据说，这一过早的宣布立即扼杀了其现有计算机的销量，尽管这是否是奥斯本倒闭的主要因素还存在争议。

The Osborne Computer Company went bankrupt in 1983. Contemporaries named the Osborne effect after the mistake it made by announcing a much superior replacement long before it was ready for sale. The premature announcement was said to have immediately killed sales of its existing computer, although whether that was really the main factor in Osborne’s demise has been debated.

最广泛使用的 CP/M 产品线是在高端 PC 市场发展很久之后发布的。Amstrad PCW 256 于 1985 年推出，将一台计算机、一个软盘驱动器和打印机控制电路集成到一个笨重的绿屏显示器中。Amstrad 是一家英国消费电子公司。其好斗的创始人 Alan Sugar 秉承了街头市场交易员的精神：“我们秉承这种理念——把它们堆得高高的，然后低价出售。” ¹⁵ Amstrad 使用电视显示管作为显示器，并购买了一位记者所说的“我用过的最难用的键盘” ^。16

The most widely used CP/M product line was released long after the high end of the PC market had moved on. The Amstrad PCW 256, launched in 1985, built a computer, a floppy disk drive, and printer control circuitry into a chunky little green-screen monitor. Amstrad was a British consumer electronics firm. Its combative founder, Alan Sugar, embraced the spirit of a street market trader: “We work on this philosophy—pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap.”¹⁵ Amstrad used a television display tube for the monitor and procured what one journalist called “the nastiest keyboard I have ever used.”¹⁶

PCW 256 的诸多功能被组合到一块定制 (ASIC) 芯片上，这大大降低了制造成本，它为办公计算所做的就相当于几年前 Commodore 和 Sinclair 为家庭计算所做的那样。此时，半导体行业按照摩尔定律实现了所谓的超大规模集成 (VLSI)，一块芯片上有数万或数十万个晶体管。20 世纪 70 年代，施乐 PARC 研究员 Lynn Conway 和加州理工学院的 Carver Mead 开发的方法使复杂芯片的设计变得容易得多。他们的教科书《VLSI 系统简介》是历史上最具影响力的计算机科学出版物之一。17^这些新的生产技术、计算机化工具和设计规则在专用芯片的生产中尤为重要。

Many functions of the PCW 256 were combined onto a single custom (ASIC) chip, which greatly reduced manufacturing cost, doing for office computing what Commodore and Sinclair had done for home computing a few years earlier. By this point the semiconductor industry, following Moore’s law, had achieved what was termed very large scale integration (VLSI) with tens or hundreds of thousands of transistors on a chip. Designing complex chips was made much easier by methodologies developed from the 1970s by Lynn Conway, a Xerox PARC researcher, and Carver Mead of Caltech. Their textbook, Introduction to VLSI Systems, was one of the most influential computer science publications in history.¹⁷ These new production techniques, computerized tools, and design rules were particularly important in the production of special-purpose chips.

Amstrad 以 399 英镑的价格推出了该套装（包括打印机），销量达数百万台，这大约是能够处理文字处理的系统通常价格的五分之一。它附带一个古怪的文字处理程序，但可以运行标准的 CP/M 程序，包括 WordStar。一则 Amstrad 广告展示了一个堆满废弃打字机的垃圾堆，另一则广告则使用了标语“比打字机便宜，比文字处理器还便宜”。这两则广告都表明，计算机技术终于便宜到足以取代打字机，而不是补充打字机。人们长期预测的 CP/M 作为商业计算平台的终结，直到 1998 年 Amstrad PCW 系列的退出才得以实现。

Amstrad sold millions after launching the package (including printer) for £399, about a fifth of the usual cost for a system able to handle word processing. It came with a quirky word processing program but could run standard CP/M programs, including WordStar. One Amstrad advertisement showed a trash heap full of abandoned typewriters, and another used the tag line “More than a word processor for less than a typewriter.” Both suggested that computer technology was finally cheap enough to dissolve the typewriter rather than supplement it. The long-predicted end of CP/M as a commercial computing platform came only with the withdrawal of the Amstrad PCW line in 1998.

维西计算

VisiCalc

业余爱好者喜欢 Apple II，但它们不适合用于文字处理。它们的标准显示屏显示半行文本，40 个字符，全部以大写字母显示。有时间、有钱、喜欢摆弄的人可以安装扩展板来克服这些限制。即便如此，将字母大写的唯一方法是在输入之前按两次 Shift 键，然后按两次 Shift 键将其移回。打印商业质量的文档意味着至少需要花费 3,000 美元添加一台高质量的菊轮打印机和串行卡。正如一位爱好者承认的那样，“Apple II 可以被改造成一个不错的文字处理器——花费巨大。” ^18总成本可能超过更精致的竞争对手。一些 Apple 用户添加了 CP/M 扩展卡，本质上是另一台小型计算机，可以装进机箱，只是为了运行 WordStar 软件。19

Hobbyists loved Apple IIs, but they were a poor choice for word processing. Their standard displays showed half a line of text, forty characters, all in block capitals. Users with time, money, and a love of fiddling around could fit expansion boards to overcome these limitations. Even then the only way to capitalize a letter was to push the shift button twice before entering it and twice afterwards to shift back. Printing business-quality documents meant adding a high-quality daisywheel printer and serial card for at least $3,000. As one enthusiast admitted, “an Apple II can be tortured into a decent word processor—at great expense.”¹⁸ The total cost expense could exceed that of more polished competitors. Some Apple users added a CP/M expansion card, essentially a whole other computer miniaturized to fit inside the case, just to run WordStar software.¹⁹

商务用户购买 Apple 电脑只有一个重要原因。VisiCalc 于 1979 年 10 月推出。它的创造者是 Daniel Bricklin 和 Robert Frankston，他们在麻省理工学院的 MAC 项目工作时相识。Bricklin 曾在数字设备公司工作，并于 20 世纪 70 年代末进入哈佛商学院。在那里，他接触到了一代又一代商学院学生必须掌握的计算：在电子表格上进行算术运算：行和列的数字，通常记录公司在几个月、几个季度或几年内的业绩。他回忆起他的一位教授在黑板上张贴、更改和分析这样的表格，使用他的助手前一天晚上手工计算的数字^。20

There was exactly one great reason for a business user to get hold of an Apple. VisiCalc launched in October 1979. Its creators were Daniel Bricklin and Robert Frankston, who had met while working on Project MAC at MIT. Bricklin had worked for Digital Equipment Corporation and in the late 1970s attended the Harvard Business School. There he came across the calculations that generations of business school students had to master: performing arithmetic on spreadsheets: rows and columns of numbers, typically documenting a company’s performance for a set of months, quarters, or years. He recalled one of his professors posting, changing, and analyzing such tables on the blackboard, using figures that his assistant had calculated by hand the night before.²⁰

布里克林构思了一个程序来自动处理这些电子表格。弗兰克斯顿同意帮忙编写。1979 年 1 月，布里克林和弗兰克斯顿在马萨诸塞州阿灵顿弗兰克斯顿的阁楼上成立了 Software Arts 公司。那年春天，弗兰克斯顿和布里克林租用了 MIT Multics 系统，这个项目开始成型。他们找到了二年级学生丹·菲尔斯特拉，他经营着一家名为 Personal Software 的出版公司。个人电脑爱好者编写的程序为菲尔斯特拉及其竞争对手提供了他们的第一批产品。这是一个新兴行业，与大型机软件公司截然不同。一些软件出版商的工作方式与图书出版商类似，向程序作者支付版税，而其他一些则以固定费用购买版权。他们起初只是一些小规模的公司，复制磁盘并将其装入密封袋中，在专业杂志上刊登广告出售，或者通过为销售新机器而兴起的经销商网络出售。

Bricklin conceived of a program to automate these spreadsheets. Frankston agreed to help write it. In January 1979, Bricklin and Frankston formed Software Arts, based in Frankston’s attic in Arlington, Massachusetts. That spring the program took shape, as Frankston and Bricklin rented time on the MIT Multics system. They approached Dan Fylstra, a second-year student, who ran a publishing business called Personal Software. Programs written by personal computer enthusiasts provided Fylstra and his competitors with their first products. This was a new industry, quite separate from mainframe software companies. Some software publishers worked like book publishers, paying royalties to the authors of programs, and others purchased the rights for a flat fee. They began as tiny operations, duplicating disks and packing them into ziplock bags, to be sold with ads in specialist magazines or through the network of dealers that sprang up to handle the new machines.

Personal Software 已经发布了大量程序，其中最成功的是一款国际象棋程序，但 VisiCalc 几乎立刻就超越了其他程序。这款程序售价 200 美元，到 1981 年中期，销量已超过 10 万台。史蒂文·利维 (Steven Levy) 在 1984 年的文章《电子表格式知识》中记录了它的最初影响。

Personal Software already published a large catalog of programs, the most successful of which was a chess program, but VisiCalc almost immediately eclipsed its other titles. Priced at $200, sales passed the 100,000 mark by mid-1981. Steven Levy recorded its initial impact in the 1984 article “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge.”

唐·杰克逊是辛辛那提的一名注册会计师。他有 40 到 50 个客户，大部分是小企业。三年前，在他购买苹果电脑之前，他曾煞费苦心地在浅绿色的交叉阴影账簿上做计算。客户会来制定计费程序，杰克逊用浅色铅笔在一张纸上写下相关数字，这样很容易擦除，然后就会出现各种问题。例如，如果计费程序基于 15% 的利率，那么如果利率上升到 18%，会发生什么情况？为了找出答案，整张表格必须重做。每个数字都必须输入到手持计算器中，然后由杰克逊的一名员工进行检查。“我要工作 20 个小时，”杰克逊说。“用电子表格，我只需要 15 分钟。” ²¹

Don Jackson is a certified public accountant in Cincinnati. He has between 40 and 50 clients, mostly small businesses. Before he bought an Apple three years ago, he painstakingly did his calculations on light green crosshatched ledger sheets. A client would come in to work out a billing procedure, and after Jackson had put the relevant numbers on a sheet—in light pencil, so erasures could be easily made—various questions would come up. For example, if the billing procedure was based on a 15 percent interest rate, what would happen if the rate went up to 18 percent? To find out, the whole sheet would have to be redone. Each figure would have to be punched into a hand calculator and then checked by one of Jackson’s employees. “I would work for twenty hours,” Jackson said. “With a spreadsheet, it takes me 15 minutes.”²¹

VisiCalc 充分发挥了苹果的优势，并尽量减少了它的弱点。Fylstra 指出，“Apple II 对 VisiCalc 至关重要。” ²²电子表格很小，因此其有限的内存容量和磁盘存储不会成为障碍，而数据库工作则不然。它们主要将文本用作标签，因此全大写显示不是问题（图 8.3）。屏幕用作更大电子表格的可滚动窗口，因此四十列显示更适合电子表格而不是文字处理。由于 Apple 直接驱动显示器，而不是像 CP/M 机器或分时系统那样将文本发送到终端，因此电子表格体验比在更昂贵的平台上更流畅。这种流畅性鼓励用户尝试使用模型和数据来回答假设问题。Levy 指出，他观察到的用户越来越痴迷于尝试创建“终极模型，电子表格的运作方式与实际业务完全一样。”其中一人称他的模型为“我的宠物，某种程度上。挠它的耳朵，刷它的代码……这几乎是一种痴迷。”

VisiCalc played wonderfully to the Apple’s strengths and minimized its weaknesses. Fylstra noted that “the Apple II was essential to VisiCalc.”²² Spreadsheets were small, so its limited memory capacity and disk storage was not a handicap, as it would be for database work. They used text mostly for labels, so the all-caps display was not a problem (figure 8.3). The screen served as a scrollable window onto a larger spreadsheet, so the forty-column display worked much better for spreadsheets than word processing. Because the Apple drove the display directly rather than sending text to a terminal like a CP/M machine or timesharing system, the spreadsheet experience was smoother on it than it would have been on a more expensive platform. This fluidity encouraged users to play around with models and data to answer what if questions. Levy noted that the users he observed were becoming obsessed with trying to create “the ultimate model, the spreadsheet that behaves just like an actual business.” One called his model “my pet, in a way. Scratching its ears and brushing its code … it’s almost an obsession.”

看似客观的计算机输出和精美的图表帮助电子表格用户有力地表达他们的想法，但正如莱维指出的那样，电子表格与早期的建模软件有一个重要的区别：它们隐藏了用户创建的公式。打印输出显示模型产生的数字，但不显示用于生成这些数字的假设，这使得调整公式以获得所需结果变得容易。“垃圾债券之王”迈克尔·米尔肯（电影《华尔街》中戈登·盖柯一角的灵感来源）能够评估表现不佳的公司的组成部分，并主张由高风险债券组成的投资组合的安全性，这通常归功于他的团队对电子表格的精通。《纽约时报》报道了他因内幕交易而被起诉的消息，称赞米尔肯创造了一个新的华尔街，在那里“敏锐的手腕和对计算机电子表格的应用知识突然比干雪利酒的嗅觉或骷髅会的会员资格更重要。” ²³

The apparently objective computer output and attractive charts helped spreadsheet users to present their ideas forcefully, but as Levy noted, spreadsheets had an important difference from earlier modeling software: they hid the formulas created by users. Printed output showed the numbers produced by the model but not the assumptions used to generate them, making it easy to tweak the formulas to get the desired results. The ability of “junk bond king” Michael Milken (an inspiration for the character Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street) to value the component parts of underperforming companies and argue for the safety of a portfolio made of risky bonds was often attributed to his team’s mastery of spreadsheets. The New York Times, reporting on his indictment for insider trading, credited Milken for creating a new Wall Street where “sharp elbows and a working knowledge of computer spreadsheets suddenly counted more than a nose for dry sherry or membership in Skull and Bones.”²³

Fylstra 还指出了与日益专业化的商店网络合作的重要性，例如快速成长的 Computerland 连锁店，该连锁店同时销售硬件和软件。他声称，在 VisiCalc 推出之前，Personal Software 就已经有大约 500 家经销商销售其产品。24 ^VisiCalc启发了杀手级应用程序( killer application的缩写)的想法，杀手级应用程序是指引人注目的软件包，大量用户愿意购买整套计算机系统来运行它。25 ^VisiCalc销售 Apple 产品的方式与Space Invaders和Pac-Man销售 Atari VCS 游戏机的方式相同。人们走进电脑商店询问 VisiCalc，离开时却带走了运行它所需的 Apple II。这些电脑非常便宜，管理人员和分析师可以从部门预算中购买，而不必经过正式的审批流程或与中央数据处理部门合作。

Fylstra also noted the importance of working with the increasingly professional network of stores, such as the fast growing Computerland chain, that sold both hardware and software. He claimed that Personal Software already had around 500 dealers selling its products before VisiCalc launched.²⁴ VisiCalc inspired the idea of the killer app (short for killer application), defined as a software package so compelling that large numbers of users would purchase an entire computer system just to run it.²⁵ VisiCalc sold Apples the same way that Space Invaders and Pac-Man sold Atari VCS consoles. People entered computer stores asking for VisiCalc and left with the Apple II needed to run it. The computers were cheap enough that managers and analysts could purchase them from departmental budgets, rather than going through a formal approval process or working with the central data processing department.

VisiCalc 标志着个人计算向套装应用软件转变。与大型机用户不同，购买个人计算机的公司通常不会聘请程序员团队为其编写定制软件。大多数用户也无法通过使用 BASIC 编写自己的程序来满足自己的需求。硬件越来越便宜，但程序员却越来越贵。未来在于这样的套装软件，它们可以销售数十万份，最终销售数百万份，从而将开发成本分摊到庞大的用户群中。

VisiCalc symbolized a shift toward packaged application software as the driving force behind personal computing. Unlike mainframe users, companies buying a personal computer were not usually going to hire a team of programmers to write custom software for it. Neither could most users realistically satisfy their needs by writing their own programs in BASIC. Hardware was getting cheaper all the time, but programmers only got more expensive. The future lay in packages like this that could sell hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of copies and so spread their development cost over a huge user base.

第一台 IBM PC

The First IBM PC

1981 年，当 IBM 推出个人电脑时，它在个人电脑高端市场的主要竞争对手是 CP/M 电脑和越来越受欢迎的 Apple II Plus。后者将个人电脑的核心组件（包括图形硬件）封装到一块电路板上，这块电路板占据了一个紧凑机箱的底部，为电源和扩展板留出了空间。键盘是机箱的一部分，但磁盘驱动器本身是单独的盒子。相比之下，IMSAI 等 CP/M 电脑大多遵循 Altair 模式。它们是坚固的金属盒，底部放着一块主板，它只不过是一个总线连接器。计算机逻辑分布在处理器、内存芯片、终端接口、打印机接口等单独的电路板上。

In 1981, when IBM launched its Personal Computer, its main competition at the upper end of the personal computer market came from CP/M computers and from Apple’s increasingly popular II Plus. The latter packaged the core components of a personal computer, including graphics hardware, onto a single board that filled the bottom of a compact case, leaving room for a power supply and expansion boards. The keyboard was part of the case, but disk drives themselves were separate boxes. In contrast, CP/M computers such as the IMSAI mostly followed the Altair model. They were sturdy metal boxes at the bottom of which lay a motherboard that was little more than a bus connector. The computer logic was spread over separate boards for the processor, memory chips, terminal interface, printer interface, and so on.

IBM 的 PC 则有所不同：像 CP/M 机器一样，它是一个厚实的金属盒子，带有外部键盘（图 8.4），但像 Apple II 一样，它包含主板核心计算机组件，例如处理器、磁带接口和内存芯片。与 Apple II 一样，IBM 将 BASIC 刻录到 ROM 芯片上，以方便没有软盘驱动器或 RAM 很少的精打细算的用户。与 CP/M 机器一样，它依靠附加卡来提供视频接口。与 CP/M 和 Apple 机器一样，它具有高度可扩展性，需要额外的卡来实现常见功能，例如连接调制解调器或打印机所需的串行和并行端口。

IBM’s PC split the difference: like the CP/M machines it was a chunky metal box with an external keyboard (figure 8.4), but like an Apple II its motherboard included core computer components such as a processor, a tape interface, and memory chips. Like the Apple II, the IBM included BASIC burned onto a ROM chip for the convenience of budget-minded users with no floppy drive or little RAM. Like the CP/M machines, it relied on an additional card to provide its video interface. Like both CP/M and Apple machines it was highly expandable and needed extra cards for common functions such as the serial and parallel ports needed to hook up modems or printers.

评论家认为 IBM PC 只是现有机器最佳特征的集合，而不是革命性的进步。Byte的评论是这样开始的：“什么微型计算机具有 Apple II 那样的彩色图形、TRS-80 Model II 那样的 80 列显示屏、Atari 800 那样的可重新定义字符集、Texas Instruments TI 99/4 那样的 16 位微处理器、Apple III 那样的扩展内存空间、TRS-80 Model III 那样的全功能大小写键盘以及 TRS-80 彩色计算机那样的 BASIC 彩色图形？答案是：IBM 个人计算机，它是微型计算机行业迄今为止提供的最佳产品的综合体。” ²⁷

Reviewers saw the IBM PC as an assemblage of the best traits of existing machines rather than a revolutionary advance. Byte’s review began “What microcomputer has color graphics like the Apple II, an 80-column display like the TRS-80 Model II, a redefinable character set like the Atari 800, a 16-bit microprocessor like the Texas Instruments TI 99/4, an expanded memory space like the Apple III, a full-function uppercase and lowercase keyboard like the TRS-80 Model III, and BASIC color graphics like the TRS-80 Color Computer? Answer: the IBM Personal Computer, which is a synthesis of the best the microcomputer industry has offered to date.”²⁷

IBM PC 配有五个扩展槽。除了键盘和磁带连接器外，每个接口都是可选的，因此它的插槽很快就被卡填满了。即使连接显示器（没有显示器，计算机就毫无用处），也意味着要安装扩展卡。最初的选择是为选择 IBM 绿屏显示器或普通彩色图形以在电视或彩色显示器上显示的商务用户提供清晰的纯文本输出。

The IBM PC came with five expansion slots. Aside from the keyboard and tape connectors, every interface was an option, so its slots quickly filled up with cards. Even connecting a display, without which the computer was quite useless, meant fitting an expansion card. The initial choices were a crisp text-only output for business users who chose IBM’s green-screen monitor or mediocre color graphics for display on a television or color monitor.

最便宜的配置是一台 16 KB 的计算机，带有一个用于电视的彩色图形适配器，但没有磁盘驱动器，售价为 1,565 美元。Byte预测“大多数人”会选择这种最低配置，这反映了 PC 与业余爱好者机器的连续性。但事实并非如此——大多数实际客户都想要磁盘存储和足够的内存来使用它。在主板上安装另一个 32 KB 的 RAM，添加两个内部磁盘驱动器并拧入软盘控制器卡、两个 64 KB 内存扩展卡（总共 176 KB）和打印机接口卡，成本增加了一倍多，达到 3,405 美元——不包括屏幕或打印机。它还会填满所有五个扩展槽，没有空间放置可选的串行接口卡（连接调制解调器所需的）或操纵杆接口卡。正如Byte所观察到的，“你不能把所有你想要的东西都放进 IBM 微型计算机”，因为“扩展槽……很快就会填满。” ²⁸

The cheapest configuration, a 16 KB computer with a color graphics adapter for the TV and no disk drive, listed for $1,565. Byte predicted that “most people” would opt for this minimal configuration, reflecting the PC’s continuity with hobbyist machines. That wasn’t true, though—most actual customers wanted disk storage and enough memory to use it. Installing another 32 KB of RAM on the main board, adding two internal disk drives and screwing in a floppy disk controller card, two 64 KB memory expansion cards (for a total of 176 KB), and a printer interface card more than doubled the cost to $3,405—not including a screen or printer. It would also fill all five expansion slots, leaving no room for the optional serial interface card, needed to connect a modem, or for the joystick interface card. As Byte observed, “you cannot put everything into the IBM microcomputer that you might want to” as “the expansion slots … will fill rather quickly.”²⁸

个人计算机DOS

PC-DOS

1980 年夏天，IBM 的代表曾与比尔·盖茨接洽，希望他能提供一款可以在英特尔 8088 上运行的 BASIC 版本。29 ^IBM预计会使用 CP/M 版本，这是个人电脑的标准操作系统，就像微软的 BASIC 是标准编程语言一样。Digital Research 已经承诺提供 16 位扩展，但当 IBM 访问 Digital Research 时，Kildall当时他并不在场，而负责公司行政工作的妻子则拒绝签署 IBM 的保密协议。

Representatives of IBM had approached Bill Gates in the summer of 1980 to supply a version of BASIC that would run on the Intel 8088.²⁹ IBM expected to use a version of CP/M, which was the standard operating system for personal computers, just as Microsoft BASIC was the standard programming language. Digital Research was already promising a 16-bit extension, but when IBM visited Digital Research, Kildall was not there, and his wife, who handled the company’s administrative work, refused to sign IBM’s nondisclosure agreement.

微软为 IBM 提供了另一种 16 位操作系统。PC-DOS 基于 86-DOS，后者是由西雅图计算机产品公司的 Tim Paterson 编写的操作系统。Paterson 的工作耗时约两个月，代码占用约 6 KB。西雅图计算机产品公司在内部将其称为 QDOS，意为“快速而粗糙的操作系统”。30它的直接灵感来自 CP/ ^M。Paterson无法访问 CP/M 源代码，但他的 DOS 使用与 CP/M 相同的函数调用并保留了一些命令名称。与 CP/M 一样，PC-DOS 也体现了极简主义的美学。一些命令是内置的，其他命令则根据需要从磁盘加载。用户通过键入名称来运行程序。这些命令可以执行诸如复制文件、显示其内容、准备（格式化）新磁盘以供使用以及自定义显示等操作。PC-DOS 命令和错误消息总体上比 CP/M 或 Apple 的 DOS 中的命令和错误消息更清晰。它对用户更宽容。相比之下，如果将错误的磁盘插入驱动器，CP/M 通常需要重新启动系统。

Microsoft offered IBM an alternative 16-bit operating system. PC-DOS was based on 86-DOS, an operating system written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products. Paterson’s work took about two months, and the code occupied about 6 KB. Seattle Computer Products referred to it internally as QDOS, for “quick and dirty operating system.”³⁰ Its immediate inspiration was CP/M. Paterson did not have access to CP/M source code, but his DOS used the same function calls as CP/M and retained some command names. Like CP/M, PC-DOS reflected a minimalist aesthetic. Some commands were built in, and others were loaded from disk as needed. Users ran programs by typing their names. The commands could do things like copy files, display their contents, prepare (format) new disks for use, and customize the display. PC-DOS commands and error messages were overall less cryptic than those in CP/M or Apple’s DOS. It was more forgiving to its users. By contrast, CP/M often needed to reboot the system if the wrong disk was inserted into a drive.

以下是 1981 年使用 IBM PC 的感觉。打开电脑时，请按下机箱背面的一个大红色开关，然后电源会发出令人满意的咔嗒声和轻轻的嗖嗖声，直到电源再次关闭。屏幕闪烁并出现光标，同时计算机检查其 RAM 和其他组件是否正常运行。这需要 10 到 15 秒；在后来的几年里，完全扩展的 PC 需要一分多钟。PC 确信可以安全继续运行后，它短暂地磨掉了软盘驱动器，然后发出响亮的哔哔声。出现闪烁的光标，第一个驱动器开始以每分钟 300 转的速度旋转。BIOS 代码识别出 PC-DOS 1.0启动盘后，驱动器发出轻轻的咔嗒声持续了大约五秒钟，同时读取头从一个磁道移动到另一磁道以读取系统文件。整个操作系统和大量演示程序都安装在一张 160 KB 的软盘上。 （其中包括《Donkey》，一款由比尔盖茨亲自编写的著名糟糕演示游戏。）

Here’s what it was like to use an IBM PC in 1981. Turning it on, by flipping a big red switch on the back of the box, caused a satisfying clunk and a gentle whoosh from the power supply that would persist until it was turned off again. The screen flickered and flashed a cursor while the computer checked its RAM and other components for proper operation. This took ten to fifteen seconds; in later years a fully expanded PC needed more than a minute. Convinced that it was safe to proceed, the PC groaned as it briefly ground its floppy disk drives and then let out a loud beep. A flashing cursor appeared, and the first drive began to whir at 300 revolutions per minute. After the BIOS code recognized the PC-DOS 1.0 boot disk, the drive issued gentle clunks for about five seconds as its read head moved from track to track to read the system files. The entire operating system and a host of demonstration programs fitted on a single 160 KB floppy disk. (That included Donkey, a famously bad demonstration game cowritten by Bill Gates himself.)

然后，DOS 接管了一切，要求用户输入当前日期，然后打印版权信息并显示 A >命令提示符。IBM 提供了出色的全尺寸分离式键盘，其布局是盲打者习惯的。要让计算机执行任何操作都需要输入命令，每次按键都会发出令人满意的咔嗒声，那些继续使用后来的 PC 更便宜、更脆弱的键盘的人对此记忆犹新。现在，复制品和翻新的 IBM 键盘每台售价数百美元。磁盘驱动器在加载 DOS 命令时经常发出嗡嗡声和咔嗒声——RAM 太宝贵了，无法保存更改屏幕模式或格式化磁盘的代码以进行整个会话。拥有两个驱动器的好处之一是能够将 DOS 磁盘放在一个驱动器中，同时运行应用程序或从另一个驱动器加载 BASIC 代码。

DOS then took over, requiring the user to enter the current date, before printing a copyright message and displaying the A> command prompt. IBM offered an excellent full-sized detached keyboard with a layout that touch typists were used to. Making the computer do anything required typing commands, each key press producing a satisfying click remembered fondly by those who went on to use the cheaper, flimsier keyboards of later PCs. Replica and refurbished IBM keyboards now sell for hundreds of dollars each. The disk drive whirred and clunked frequently as DOS commands loaded—RAM was too precious to hold the code to change screen modes or format disks for an entire session. One of the benefits of having two drives was being able to leave the DOS disk in one while running applications or loading BASIC code from the other.

在商业市场超越苹果

Besting Apple in the Business Market

PC 最初相对于 Apple 的优势在于其精细度，而非原始的计算能力。其英特尔 8088 处理器是 16 位 8086 的精简版，理论上比早期个人电脑上使用的 8 位处理器更强大，但Byte观察到，在实践中，“必须通过 8 位路径传输所有数据，这降低了 8088 的性能，以至于它更像是一个具有扩展指令集的快速 8 位微处理器，而不是 16 位微处理器。” ³¹

The PC’s initial advantage over the Apple was finesse rather than raw computing power. Its Intel 8088 processor, a cut-down version of the 16-bit 8086, was theoretically more powerful than the 8-bit processors used on earlier personal computers, but Byte observed that in practice “the necessity of funneling all data through an 8-bit path degrades the 8088’s performance to the point where it is more like a fast 8-bit microprocessor with an extended instruction set than it is a 16-bit microprocessor.”³¹

IBM 在 PC 上取得的最大成功来自企业市场。大型公司的数据处理部门对苹果持怀疑态度，因此与 IBM 建立了牢固的关系。IBM PC 的成本与视频终端相当。IBM 甚至推出了一款特殊版本的 PC，该 PC 配置了特殊的硬件和软件，以模仿其出售的用于大型机的 3270 系列视频终端。32^{但许多企业 PC 的购买是由个人主动性而非官方政策推动的。数据处理人员一直使用王字处理器}或 IBM 大型机，失去了控制权。1982 年 12 月，《时代》杂志将这款电脑评为“年度机器”。33

IBM’s biggest success with the PC came in the business market. Larger companies, whose data processing departments were skeptical of Apple, had strong relationships with IBM. An IBM PC was comparable in cost to a video terminal. IBM even offered a special version of the PC configured with special hardware and software to mimic the 3270 series video terminals it sold for use with its mainframes.³² But many corporate PC purchases were driven by individual initiatives, not official policies. Data processing staff, wedded to Wang word processors or IBM mainframes, were losing control. In December 1982, Time magazine named the computer its “Machine of the Year.”³³

IBM PC 几乎没有面临来自 Apple 的竞争。Apple II 已有四年历史，并且针对计算机爱好者进行了优化。例如，IBM 的 PC 可以显示整整八十列大写和小写文本。Apple 并没有在 Apple II 中添加类似的功能，而是将它们整合到了 1980 年推出的更昂贵且不兼容的 Apple III 中。Apple 急于将机器推向市场，同时又希望将新功能压缩到一块小主板上，这导致其第一批机器非常不可靠。Apple 最终召回并更换了整个生产批次^。34

The IBM PC faced little competition from Apple. The Apple II was four years old and optimized for computer hobbyists. For example, IBM’s PC displayed a full eighty columns of upper- and lower-case text. Rather than add comparable features to the Apple II, Apple had incorporated them into its more expensive, and incompatible, Apple III, launched in 1980. Apple’s rush to get the machine to market had combined with its desire to squeeze new capabilities onto a small motherboard to make its first batch of machines spectacularly unreliable. Apple finished up recalling and replacing the entire production run.³⁴

这次惨败毁掉了 Apple III 的前景，但直到 1983 年 IIe 问世，苹果才对 Apple II 进行了重大升级。史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克后来写道，这句话有些夸张，“在那段时间（1980 年至 1983 年），苹果在 Apple II 上花费的唯一薪水几乎都花在了印刷价格表的人身上。” ³⁵在十年的生命周期中，IIe 销售了数百万份，是早期型号的很多倍。新设计降低了制造成本，足以让苹果在 20 世纪 80 年代中期在其核心家庭和教育市场中维持运营，而其实用但适度的改进对 IBM 在商业用途上的竞争力影响不大。

This fiasco killed the Apple III’s prospects, but Apple didn’t release a major upgrade to the Apple II until the IIe arrived in 1983. Steve Wozniak later wrote, with a touch of overstatement, that “about the only salary Apple spent on the Apple II during that period—1980 to 1983—was on the guy who printed the price lists.”³⁵ Over a ten-year lifespan the IIe sold millions of copies, many times the volume of earlier models. The new design lowered manufacturing costs enough to keep Apple afloat through the mid-1980s in its core home and education markets, whereas its useful but modest enhancements did little to challenge IBM for business use.

8087 和 IEEE 浮点

The 8087 and IEEE Floating Point

使用个人计算机（例如 Apple II）进行工程计算或财务建模的成本比使用大型机或分时系统要低得多。但只有小型作业才能适应其有限的内存并以可接受的速度运行。复杂的模型仍然需要大型计算机。随着 IBM PC 的出现，这种情况开始改变。即使是最初的 IBM PC 也可以扩展到比 Apple 大得多的内存容量。

Doing engineering calculations or financial modeling cost a lot less with a personal computer, such as the Apple II, than with a mainframe or timesharing system. But only small jobs would fit into its limited memory and run at an acceptable speed. Complex models still required big computers. That began to change with the IBM PC. Even the original IBM PC could be expanded to much larger memory capacities than the Apple.

另一个巨大的区别是浮点支持。自 20 世纪 50 年代以来，强大的浮点硬件支持一直是大型科学用途计算机的决定性特征。最初的 PC 中使用的 8088 并不支持浮点，其在技术计算中的表现也很一般。但每台 PC 都有一个空插槽等待着一种新型芯片的出现，那就是 8087浮点协处理器。8087 是第一个实现新浮点方法的芯片，该方法由 William Kahan 提出，后来在标准 IEEE 754 中正式化。包括 DEC 和 IBM 在内的公司采用了该方法，这是科学计算的一大进步，Kahan 为此获得了图灵奖。即使是使用像 Fortran 这样的标准语言编写的代码，以前在不同的计算机上运行时也会产生不一致的浮点结果。杰罗姆·库南 (Jerome Coonen) 是卡汉的学生，曾负责管理 Macintosh 的原始软件开发，据他所说，这一对稳健机制的标准化是“向前迈出的一大步”，摆脱了之前的“糟糕局面……卡汉的成就是让浮点数在 40 年内被视为理所当然。” ³⁶

The other big difference was floating-point support. Since the 1950s, capable floating-point hardware support had been the defining characteristic of large scientifically oriented computers. The 8088 used in the original PC did not support floating point and its performance on technical calculations was mediocre. But every PC included an empty socket waiting for a new kind of chip, the 8087 floating-point coprocessor. The 8087 was the first chip to implement a new approach to floating point, proposed by William Kahan and later formalized in the standard IEEE 754. Its adoption by firms including DEC and IBM was a major advance for scientific computing, for which Kahan received a Turing Award. Code, even in a standard language like Fortran, had previously produced inconsistent floating-point results when run on different computers. According to Jerome Coonen, a student of Kahan’s who managed software development for the original Macintosh, this standardization on robust mechanisms was a “huge step forward” from the previous “dismal situation … Kahan’s achievement was having floating point taken for granted for 40 years.”³⁶

8087 于 1980 年发布，但由于突破了英特尔生产工艺的极限，因此进入市场的速度很慢。Steven S. Fried 在《Byte》杂志上写道，它“是一款成熟的 80 位处理器，数字运算速度提高了 100 倍……与中型小型计算机的速度相同，同时比大多数大型机提供更高的精度。” ³⁷ 8088 本身只有 29,000 个晶体管，但其协处理器需要 45,000 个晶体管来实现自己的寄存器和堆栈。

The 8087 was announced in 1980 but trickled into the market because it pushed the limits of Intel’s production processes. Writing in Byte, Steven S. Fried called it “a full-blown 80-bit processor that performs numeric operations up to 100 times faster … at the same speed as a medium-sized minicomputer, while providing more accuracy than most mainframes.”³⁷ The 8088 itself had only 29,000 transistors, but its coprocessor needed 45,000 to implement its own registers and stack.

汇编语言代码和语言编译器必须重写才能使用特殊的浮点指令，这些指令与主处理器正在执行的操作并行执行。科学用户很快接受了 8087，这使得 PC 成为小型计算机的可靠替代品。弗里德曾承诺“8087 也可以在商业应用程序中创造奇迹”，但软件支持有限。即使是仅用于处理数字的 Lotus-1-2-3 也没有使用它。弗里德开始从事销售补丁的业务，以向此类软件包添加协处理器支持。38^随着时间的推移，IEEE 风格的浮点成为每个处理器的核心部分。到 1989 年英特尔推出 80486 时，其工厂几乎能够生产这款带有内置协处理器的一百万个晶体管芯片。软件开发人员，尤其是视频游戏程序员，开始使用浮点指令。到 20 世纪 90 年代末，PC 处理器主要依靠其浮点能力进行竞争。

Assembly language code and language compilers had to be rewritten to use special floating-point instructions, executed in parallel with whatever the main processor was doing. Scientific users quickly embraced the 8087, which made the PC a credible alternative to minicomputers. Fried had promised that “the 8087 can also work wonders with business applications,” but software support was limited. Even Lotus-1-2-3, which existed only to crunch numbers, did not utilize it. Fried began a business selling patches to add coprocessor support to such packages.³⁸ Over time, IEEE-style floating point became a core part of every processor. By the time Intel launched the 80486 in 1989, its factories were just about able to manufacture this one million transistor chip with its built-in coprocessor. Software developers, particularly video game programmers, began to use floating-point instructions. By the late 1990s, PC processors competed largely on the strength of their floating-point capabilities.

PC XT 和 PCjr

The PC XT and the PCjr

PC 的发展反映了其作为高端商务机器的成功。1983 年，IBM 推出了 PC XT，它取消了卡带接口和其他针对家庭用户的功能。雄心勃勃的 PC 用户很快就用完了扩展槽。XT 又增加了三个，外加用于 256 KB RAM 的插槽，这释放了更多插槽。其最大的新功能是标准的 10 MB 硬盘驱动器。添加硬盘驱动器改变了使用 PC 的体验，使其更接近使用小型计算机或工作站的感觉。新的应用程序被复制到硬盘驱动器上运行。即使是最慢的硬盘驱动器传输数据的速度也比软盘驱动器快得多，对于大多数用户来说，它可以容纳完整的程序和工作数据。随着价格下降和容量上升，硬盘很快成为除最便宜的 PC 之外的所有 PC 的标准设备。到 1986 年，旧型号的升级套件售价不到 500 美元。硬盘为个人计算带来了新的复杂性，要​​求用户管理他们的目录结构，并为备份其内容的硬件和软件开辟了新的市场。彼得·诺顿 (Peter Norton) 创建的流行诺顿实用程序包中包含用于恢复意外删除的文件、导航目录结构和优化硬盘性能的程序。

The evolution of the PC reflected its success as a higher-end, business-oriented machine. In 1983 IBM launched the PC XT, which dropped the cassette interface and other features aimed at home users. Ambitious PC users had quickly run out of expansion slots. The XT added three more, plus sockets for a full 256 KB of RAM, which freed up more slots. Its biggest new feature was a standard 10 MB hard disk drive. Adding a hard disk drive transformed the experience of using a PC, bringing it closer to the feeling of using a minicomputer or workstation. New application programs were copied onto the hard drive to run. Even the slowest hard drives transferred data far more rapidly than floppy disk drives and, for most users, could hold a complete collection of programs and working data. As prices fell and capacities rose, hard disks soon became standard equipment on all but the cheapest PCs. By 1986, upgrade kits for older models were available for less than $500. Hard disks introduced new complexities into personal computing, requiring users to manage their directory structures, and opened new markets for hardware and software to back up their contents. The popular Norton Utilities package, created by Peter Norton, included programs to restore accidentally deleted files, navigate directory structures, and optimize hard disk performance.

比较 PC XT 和 Apple IIe（两者均于 1983 年制造），可以深入了解生产它们的文化。IBM 的彩色图形适配器板占据整个机箱，包含 69 个芯片。IIe 遵循了沃兹尼亚克高效而独特的工程传统。Apple 的整个机器（包括一个可增加内存并支持与 IBM 相当的高分辨率图形的扩展板）仅包含 41 个芯片。其颜色生成机制是一种与美国电视使用的 NCSA 系统相关的黑客技术，可定时生成信号脉冲以触发彩色显示。Apple 的最小软盘驱动器和控制卡总共包含 12 个芯片，而 IBM PC 则包含 51 个芯片。特雷西·基德讲了一个著名的故事，讲的是一位 Data General 工程师偷偷查看 DEC VAX 处理器柜内部。他“想象他看到了 DEC 公司组织结构图”，因为它将功能高度分隔在二十七块电路板上。这种布局“表达了那个取得巨大成功的公司谨慎、官僚的风格”。39IBM^的个人电脑同样是惊人保守的设计，但是它们坚固的平淡无奇和无与伦比的可扩展性足以战胜苹果老旧设计的古怪效率。

Comparing a PC XT and an Apple IIe, both manufactured in 1983, gives an insight into the cultures that produced them. IBM’s Color Graphics Adapter board ran the entire length of the case and contained 69 chips. The IIe followed Wozniak’s tradition of efficient and idiosyncratic engineering. Apple’s entire machine, including an expansion board that boosted memory and enabled high-resolution graphics comparable to IBM’s, contained only 41 chips. Its color generation mechanism was a hack tied to the NCSA system used by American televisions, timing the generation of signal pulses to trigger color display. Apple’s minimal floppy disk drive and controller card held a total of 12 chips, versus 51 for the IBM PC’s. Tracy Kidder told a famous story about a Data General engineer sneaking a look inside the processor cabinet of a DEC VAX. He “imagined he saw a diagram of DEC’s corporate organization” in its highly compartmentalized separation of functions onto twenty-seven circuit boards. The layout “expressed that phenomenally successful company’s cautious, bureaucratic style.”³⁹ IBM’s PCs were likewise strikingly conservative designs, but their robust blandness and unrivalled expandability were more than enough to triumph over the quirky efficiency of Apple’s aging design.

XT 在 20 世纪 80 年代中期为办公电脑树立了典范，但 IBM 并未放弃家用市场。在 XT 推出约七个月后，它宣布推出 PCjr，这是一款精简版 PC，机箱更小，主板上内置了更多设备，但内部可扩展性较差。它有用于视频游戏或编程语言的 ROM 卡带端口，以及可在沙发上使用的无线键盘。在推出之前，PCjr 有望主宰家用电脑市场，但事实证明，对于想要更便宜的 IBM PC 的人来说，它功能太有限，而且价格太昂贵，无法与视频游戏玩家使用的 Commodore 64 竞争。《纽约时报》的评论认为它的键盘“相当奇怪”，“就像橡胶蜈蚣一样优雅”。评论指出：“手稿写了两页，我正在寻找一个便笺簿和一支笔来完成我的故事。” ⁴⁰

The XT set the template for office computing in the mid-1980s but IBM had not given up on the home market. About seven months after the XT, it announced the PCjr, a cut-down version of the PC in a smaller case with more equipment built onto the motherboard but less internal expandability. It had ROM cartridge ports for video games or programming languages and a wireless keyboard for use on the sofa. Before its launch, the PCjr was expected to dominate the home computing market, but it proved too limited for people who wanted a cheaper IBM PC and far too expensive to compete with the Commodore 64 for video gamers. The New York Times review dismissed its keyboard as “rather strange” with “all the grace of a rubber-kneed centipede.” “Two pages into a manuscript,” noted the review, “I was looking for a pad and pen with which to finish my story.”⁴⁰

PCjr 已成为商业史上最著名的失败产品之一，堪比福特 Edsel 等企业灾难。不过，它确实推出了一种新的 16 色 PC 视频模式，旨在使视频游戏更具吸引力。软件公司 Sierra On-Line 与 IBM 合作制作了一款游戏来展示新的图形，推出了公司联合创始人罗伯塔·威廉姆斯 (Roberta Williams) 设计的首款极受欢迎的“图形冒险”游戏 Kings Quest。Sierra的冒险游戏，其中还包括幽默的科幻小说Space Quest和冒险的Leisure Suit Larry标题，使用了视频游戏控制和键入命令的混合。41^与它们迅速超越的 Infocom 游戏不同，它们主要依靠图片来描述玩家穿越的环境。 PCjr 视频模式被称为“Tandy 图形”，因为它被 Radio Shack 抄袭，用于流行的低成本 PC 兼容机系列，取代了老化的 TRS-80 系列，成功弥补了 IBM 未能将 PC 技术引入家用电脑市场的缺陷。

The PCjr has become one of business history’s most famously unsuccessful products, on a par with corporate disasters such as the Ford Edsel. It did, however, debut a new sixteen-color PC video mode intended to make video games more appealing. Software company Sierra On-Line worked with IBM to produce a game to show off the new graphics, delivering the first of the hugely popular Kings Quest “graphical adventures” designed by company cofounder Roberta Williams. Sierra’s adventures, which also included the humorous science fiction Space Quest and risqué Leisure Suit Larry titles, used a hybrid of video-game controls and typed commands.⁴¹ Unlike the Infocom games, which they quickly eclipsed, they relied primarily on pictures to describe the environments through which players traveled. The PCjr video mode is remembered as “Tandy graphics” because it was copied by Radio Shack for a popular line of low-cost PC compatible machines that replaced the aging TRS-80 series, succeeding where IBM had failed in bringing PC technology to the home computer market.

莲花 1-2-3

Lotus 1-2-3

IBM PC 为快速发展的微型计算机应用软件行业开辟了新的机会。在公司办公室中，从 Apple II 开始的个人计算机小规模发展成为运行 Lotus 1-2-3、Word Perfect 等文字处理软件和 dBase II 等数据库程序的 IBM PC 大潮。

The IBM PC opened up new opportunities for the rapidly developing microcomputer application software industry. In corporate offices, the little stream of personal computers that began with the Apple II became a flood of IBM PCs running Lotus 1-2-3, word processing software like Word Perfect, and database programs like dBase II.

由于个人电脑使用量大幅增长，到 20 世纪 80 年代末，最大的 PC 软件公司的收入已达数亿美元，拥有数千名员工。购买价格远低于大型机软件包，但最成功的产品销量达数百万而非数千。领先的 PC 软件包不是装在密封袋中，而是每套售价约 500 美元，并装在坚固的纸板书套中，里面装有专业制作的手册。

Thanks to the huge growth in personal computer use, by the end of the 1980s the largest PC software firms had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of employees. Purchase prices were much smaller than for mainframe packages, but the most successful products sold millions rather than thousands. Rather than ziplock bags, the leading PC software packages sold for around $500 each and came in sturdy cardboard slipcase binders holding professionally produced manuals.

随着个人电脑的发布，IBM 还宣布推出文字处理、会计、游戏软件和 VisiCalc 版本。Mitch Kapor 之前曾为 VisiCalc 开发过插件，他非常清楚如何改进它，于是他与经验丰富的程序员 Jonathan Sachs 合作，成立了一家竞争对手公司，即 Lotus Development Corporation。

With the PC’s announcement, IBM also announced the availability of word processing, accounting, games software, and a version of VisiCalc. Mitch Kapor, who had previously developed add-ins for VisiCalc and knew exactly how it could be improved, partnered with an experienced programmer, Jonathan Sachs, to start a rival firm, the Lotus Development Corporation.

Lotus 1-2-3 与 VisiCalc 类似，但在其核心电子表格功能中增加了图形和数据库功能（由名称中的2和3表示）。它象征着 PC 软件行业转向一种新的、更专业的商业模式。由于它是专门为 IBM PC 编写的，使用汇编语言来获得更快的性能，因此它的运行速度比其他电子表格（包括 PC 版的 VisiCalc）快得多。Kapor 通过出售他早期的程序和从风险投资家那里获得了数百万美元，以承保该程序的初始开发和发布。这让 Lotus 在 1983 年 1 月以一个精致而完整的程序（包括专业手册和教程磁盘）引起了轰动^。42

Lotus 1-2-3 was similar to VisiCalc, but added graphing and database capabilities (indicated by the name’s 2 and 3) to its core spreadsheet features. It symbolized the shift of the PC software industry to a new, more professional business model. Because it was written specifically for the IBM PC, using assembly language to gain faster performance, it ran much faster than other spreadsheets including the PC version of VisiCalc. Kapor had obtained several million dollars from selling his earlier programs and from venture capitalists to underwrite the initial development and launch of the program. This let Lotus make a splash in January 1983 with a polished and complete program including a professional manual and a tutorial disk.⁴²

上市第一年年底，1-2-3 的销售额就达到了 5300 万美元。其最引人注目的功能之一是宏系统，用于记录和重放命令序列。这些序列可以与简单的程序代码混合，以确定要执行的操作。据 Kapor 说：“这是我们在市场上获胜的原因之一，因为它完全释放了最终用户的力量。” ⁴³

By the end of its first year on the market, 1-2-3 had achieved $53 million in sales. One of its most compelling features was a macro system to record and replay sequences of commands. These sequences could be mixed with simple program code to figure out what actions to perform. According to Kapor, “That was one of the reasons we won in the marketplace, because it just totally unleashed the power of end-users.”⁴³

Lotus 1-2-3 非常受欢迎，以至于它启发了几个克隆程序，这些克隆程序复制了 Lotus 的菜单结构和宏命令语言。这提出了一个新的法律问题：版权法是否可以扩大到保护程序的外观和感觉以及其实际代码？Lotus 最初在起诉一款名为 The Twin 的明显克隆程序的制造商时取得了成功，但最终在另一起案件（Lotus v. Borland）中败诉，该案件裁定命令菜单不受版权保护^。44

Lotus 1-2-3 was so popular that it inspired several clones, which copied the Lotus menu structure and macro command language. This raised a novel legal question: could copyright law be stretched to protect the look and feel of a program as well as its actual code? Lotus was initially successful when it sued the makers of a blatant clone, called The Twin, but eventually lost in another case (Lotus v. Borland) that established that command menus were not covered by copyright protection.⁴⁴

完美词库

WordPerfect

WordStar 是 IBM PC 最初几年最受欢迎的文字处理程序。与 VisiCalc 一样，它是从 CP/M 直接转换而来，没有充分利用 PC 的功能。多年来积累的新功能只会增加其用户界面的尴尬。1983 年的一篇评论将 WordStar 3.0 描述为“成千上万的鲁布·戈德堡带和绳索将事物连接在一起，没有任何整体统一的概念（甚至十几个）。” ⁴⁵竞争对手复制了流行的文字处理机的界面，这有助于吸引他们的客户使用更便宜的 PC 硬件。MultiMate 复制了 Wang 系统的操作，使他们的用户可以轻松迁移到更便宜的 PC 系统。IBM 自己的软件包 Displaywrite 模仿了其 Displaywriter 文字处理系统^。46

WordStar was the most popular word processing program for the IBM PC for the first few years. As with VisiCalc, it was a straight conversion, in this case from CP/M, which did not take full advantage of the capabilities of the PC. New features accumulated over the years only added to the awkwardness of its user interface. A 1983 review described WordStar 3.0 as “thousands of Rube Goldberg straps and ropes holding things together without any overall unifying concept (or even a dozen).”⁴⁵ Rivals copied the interfaces of popular word processing machines, which helped to lure their customers over to cheaper PC hardware. MultiMate copied the operation of Wang systems, making it easy for their users to migrate to cheaper PC systems. IBM’s own package, Displaywrite, mimicked its Displaywriter word processing system.⁴⁶

WordStar 最终被 Satellite Software 的 WordPerfect 所取代，后者于 1982 年底首次出现在 PC 上。WordPerfect 最初是在杨百翰大学的 Data General 小型计算机上诞生的，因此它比 WordStar 更适合强大的 PC 平台。它运行速度快（像 1-2-3 一样，用汇编语言编写，可直接与 PC 显示硬件配合使用），功能强大，并且具有基于 Shift、Control 和功能键组合的简洁命令结构。这需要一段时间才能学会，键盘上还放了一个纸质遮罩，但经验丰富的用户可以立即访问每个功能。他们可以在简洁的文本显示和用特殊标签标记所有格式代码的替代视图之间切换。一篇早期评论的标题“虽然不完美，但绝对出色”反映了人们对该程序的反响。47 ^PC Magazine称其为“文字处理冠军的有力竞争者”。评论者宣称“在 WordPerfect 中移动是一种乐趣”，因为 Page Up、Page Down 和光标键都可以直观地运行，这提醒我们，在 PC 时代初期，人们对可用性的期望有多低^。48

WordStar was eventually superseded by Satellite Software’s WordPerfect, which first appeared for the PC in late 1982. Having begun life on a Data General minicomputer at Brigham Young University, it was better suited than WordStar to the powerful PC platform. It was fast (written, like 1-2-3, in assembly language and working directly with PC display hardware) and powerful, and it had a clean command structure based on combinations of the Shift, Control, and function keys. This took a while to learn, aided by a paper mask placed over the keyboard, but gave experienced users instant access to every function. They could switch between a clean text display and an alternative view that marked all formatting codes with special tags. Reaction to the program was captured by the title of one early review “Not Quite Perfect, But Certainly Superb.”⁴⁷ PC Magazine called it “a solid contender for the word processing championship.” The reviewer’s declaration that “moving around within WordPerfect is a joy,” because the Page Up, Page Down, and cursor keys all functioned intuitively, reminds us how low expectations were for usability at the dawn of the PC era.⁴⁸

后续版本包含更多功能，包括支持多种打印机和内置宏语言，可自动执行复杂的格式和编辑运营。WordPerfect 于 1986 年发布的 4.2 版为 20 世纪 80 年代的其余时间树立了标准，并最终在销售量上超越了 WordStar。在 1990 年左右达到顶峰时，WordPerfect 控制了大约一半的文字处理软件市场。49 总部^位于犹他州使该公司在国际销售和支持方面具有特殊优势，因为许多当地居民曾在海外的摩门教传教团中服役。

Later versions packed in more features, including support for many different printers and a built-in macro language to automate complex formatting and editing operations. WordPerfect release 4.2 in 1986 set the standard for the rest of the 1980s and finally overtook WordStar in sales. At its peak around 1990, WordPerfect controlled around half the market for word processing software.⁴⁹ Being based in Utah gave the firm a particular advantage in international sales and support, as many of the local residents had served on Mormon missions overseas.

数据库

dBASE

PC“三大”应用领域中的最后一个是数据库软件。这需要最大的权衡。IBM PC 可以提供比任何分时小型计算机更灵敏的电子表格体验，并忠实地复制使用专用文字处理系统的体验。它们缺乏存储容量、可靠性、网络功能和处理能力，无法复制在大型机和大型小型计算机上运行的数据库管理系统。然而，对于使用配备硬盘的 PC 的小型企业来说，PC 数据库仍然很有用。标准的 20 MB 硬盘可以存储数万条记录，足以处理销售、客户和库存记录。

The last of the “big three” PC application areas was database software. This demanded the biggest tradeoffs. IBM PCs could provide a more responsive spreadsheet experience than any timesharing minicomputer and faithfully replicate the experience of using a dedicated word processing system. They lacked the storage capacities, reliability, networking capabilities and processing power to duplicate the database management systems running on mainframes and large minicomputers. PC databases were still useful, however, for small businesses that used PCs equipped with hard drives. A standard 20 MB hard drive could potentially store tens of thousands of records, enough to handle sales, customer and inventory records.

IBM PC 上最受欢迎的数据库软件包是 Ashton Tate 的 dBASE，它是 CP/M 的转换版本。dBASE 是一种编程系统，而不是普通办公室工作人员的工具，但它比 Pascal 等通用语言更简单、更高效，而且运行在价格低廉的硬件上，小型企业也买得起。dBASE 包括用于创建屏幕表单以进行数据输入和显示以及管理结构化数据文件的工具。它的编程语言针对文件操作进行了优化，可以轻松地在文件中搜索符合指定条件的记录。报告模块创建了用于打印输出的模板。一个蓬勃发展的承包商社区应运而生，他们创建了定制的 dBase 应用程序。小型软件公司为特定行业（如汽车修理厂）生产 dBase 应用程序，并将其与硬件一起打包出售^。50

The most popular database package for the IBM PC, Ashton Tate’s dBASE, was a conversion from CP/M. dBASE was a programming system and not a tool for the typical office worker, but it was an easier and more productive tool than a general-purpose language like Pascal and ran on hardware cheap enough for smaller businesses to afford. dBASE included tools to create on-screen forms for data entry and display and to manage structured data files. Its programming language was optimized for file operations, making it easy to search a file for records that matched specified criteria. A reporting module created templates for printed output. A booming community of contractors emerged to create custom dBase applications. Small software companies produced dBase applications for specific industries, such as auto mechanic shops, and sold them packaged with hardware.⁵⁰

和 WordStar 一样，dBase II 也是 IBM PC 的首发产品之一。与 WordStar 不同的是，dBase 一直保持着其主导地位，直到 PC 时代。1985 年发布的 dBASE III Plus 巩固了其作为标准 PC 数据库软件包的地位。它一直保持着这一地位，直到 1988 年 dBASE IV 的发布，这款软件充满了错误，并消除了开发人员所依赖的一些功能。51^这些开发人员转向使用相同编程语言的 FoxBase 和 Clipper 等系统。Ashton-Tate 解雇了许多员工，并将自己卖给了竞争对手。dBASE 语言在 20 世纪 90 年代逐渐衰落，但广泛部署的东西不会很快消失。即使在今天，一个重要的开发者社区仍在继续增强和支持 dBASE 应用程序。

Like WordStar, dBase II was one of the launch titles for the IBM PC. Unlike WordStar, dBase retained its dominant position well into the PC era. dBASE III Plus, released in 1985, cemented its place as the standard PC database package. It retained that position until the launch of dBASE IV in 1988, which was full of bugs and eliminated some of the features developers relied on.⁵¹ Those developers shifted to systems such as FoxBase and Clipper that used the same programming language. Ashton-Tate laid off many of its employees and sold itself to a rival. The dBASE language dwindled in the 1990s, but nothing that’s widely deployed goes away quickly. Even today, a significant developer community continues to enhance and support dBASE applications.

共享软件

Shareware

PC 帮助应用软件业务成为一个快速增长的行业，但并不是每个 PC 用户都愿意花 500 美元购买 Lotus 1-2-3 或 WordPerfect。一个选择最简单的办法就是无视版权法，从朋友那里复制安装盘。软件公司开展了打击盗版的活动。一些人希望，随软件包提供的厚厚手册和他们为注册用户提供的电话支持能够打击盗版。大量独立指南和日益普及的复印机使这个问题不再那么严重。Lotus 和其他几家领先公司开始采用复制保护，故意在软盘中引入错误，而用户无法用普通磁盘驱动器复制这些错误。即使从硬盘加载程序，也需要软盘。这不受用户的欢迎——特殊磁盘并不总是能用，如果它们丢失或损坏，程序将毫无用处。面对被迫管理数千张关键磁盘的大公司的投诉，软件公司最终放弃了这些计划^。52

The PC helped turn the application software business into a fast-growing industry, but not every PC user wanted to spend $500 on Lotus 1-2-3 or WordPerfect. One option was simply to ignore copyright law and copy the installation disks from a friend. Software companies ran campaigns to discourage piracy. Some hoped that the hefty manuals supplied with their packages and the telephone support they provided to registered users would discourage piracy. A flood of independent guidebooks and the increasing ubiquity of photocopiers made that less of a problem. Lotus and several other leading firms turned to copy protection, introducing deliberate errors into floppy disks that users would be unable to reproduce with an ordinary disk drive. The floppy disk was needed even when the program was loaded from a hard drive. That was unpopular with users—the special disks didn’t always work, and if they were lost or damaged the program would be useless. Software companies eventually abandoned these schemes in the face of complaints from large companies forced to manage thousands of key disks.⁵²

与此同时，软件行业日益专业化，将程序转化为金钱也变得越来越困难。将程序包装成精美的盒子和手册，进行广告宣传，并将其投放到商店，成本高得令人望而生畏。到 1983 年，一种新的商业模式出现了：共享软件。该术语由文字处理器 PC-Write 推广，该程序由前微软程序员 Bob Wallis 编写和销售。Wallis 鼓励用户为朋友复印，并要求那些觉得有用的人邮寄 75 美元以获得印刷手册和技术支持。两个稍早且广泛使用的版本使用了类似的商业模式：通信软件包 PC-Talk 和数据库程序 PC-File。

Meanwhile, the increasing professionalism of the software industry made it harder to turn programs into money. Packaging a program with a nice box and manual, advertising it, and getting it into stores was dauntingly expensive. By 1983, a new business model had emerged: shareware. The term was popularized by a word processor, PC-Write, written and sold by Bob Wallis, a former Microsoft programmer. Wallis encouraged users to make copies for their friends, asking those who found it useful to mail $75 for a printed manual and technical support. Two slightly earlier and widely used releases used similar business models: the communications package PC-Talk and the database program PC-File.

这三个软件包都是经过精心设计的程序，大多数试用过的人都能完成工作。一位评论者称 PC Write“确实非常好”，尽管它有一些怪癖，比如每次需要打印文档时，用户都必须退出一个程序并加载另一个程序。53 并非^所有用户都付费，但那些不付费的用户至少帮助将该程序传播给了其他可能付费的用户。这些软件的作者获得了数百万美元，并摆脱了传统软件公司必须支持的大多数任务，如电话营销和销售。只需要一小部分员工来回答用户的问题并存入支票。

All three packages were polished programs that got the job done for most people who tried them. One reviewer called PC Write “very good indeed,” despite some quirks such as forcing users to quit one program and load another every time a document needed to be printed.⁵³ Not all users paid, but the ones who didn’t at least helped to spread the program to others who might. Their authors received millions of dollars and were freed from most of the tasks, like telemarketing and sales, which conventional software companies had to support. It took only a small staff to answer questions from users and deposit the checks.

另一种共享软件产品是用于压缩文件的 ZIP 格式，至今仍被广泛使用。“PKZIP”以其创始人、密尔沃基人 Phil Katz 的名字命名，于 1989 年作为共享软件包推出。它对“非商业”用途免费，但 Katz 建议满意的用户捐款 25 美元。ZIP 很快取代了以前用于分发的压缩文件方法，随着程序文件越来越大，软盘和调制解调器链路的容量越来越紧张，ZIP 的作用也越来越重要。

Another shareware product, the ZIP format for compressed files, is still widely used today. “PKZIP,” named after its creator, Phil Katz, of Milwaukee, was introduced in 1989 as shareware package. It was free for “noncommercial” use, although Katz suggested a $25 donation from satisfied users. ZIP quickly replaced previous methods of compressing files for distribution, an increasingly important role as program files grew larger and strained the capacities for floppy disks and modem links.

共享软件程序以 ZIP 文件的形式传播，通过公告板、计算机用户组和公共领域软件库进行共享。“图书馆”是发布他们准备的磁盘目录的企业，只需几美元就可以复制和邮寄。他们的目录还包括真正的公共领域程序，这些程序的作者已经放弃了他们的版权。最大的图书馆，如休斯顿的公共软件图书馆，拥有数千张磁盘。

Shareware programs spread as ZIP files, shared via bulletin boards, computer user groups, and public domain software libraries. The “libraries” were businesses that issued catalogs of disks that they prepared, for a few dollars, to duplicate and mail. Their catalogs also included truly public domain programs, whose authors had renounced their copyright. The largest, such as the Public Software Library in Houston, featured many thousands of disks.

一些共享软件程序在支付注册费后会解锁附加功能，例如视频游戏中的额外关卡。基于捐赠的共享软件模式在 20 世纪 80 年代末期变得不那么常见了，但这种有时被称为“残缺软件”或“免费增值”的变体随着互联网接入的普及和向移动设备的转变而激增。如今，大多数商业软件都是免费下载的，但用户必须支付注册费（有时在应用程序内支付）才能完全使用。

Some shareware programs unlocked additional features, such as extra levels in video games, once the registration payment was made. The donation-based shareware model became less common after the late 1980s, but this variant, sometimes called “crippleware” or “freemium,” proliferated with the spread of Internet access and the shift to mobile devices. Today most commercial software is downloaded freely, but users must pay a registration fee (sometimes from inside the application) for it to be fully usable.

扩展卡

Expansion Cards

IBM 推出了一款带有少量扩展卡的 PC，但它记录了接口，以便其他公司可以生产附加硬件。一个蓬勃发展的行业很快就出现了，为它们提供产品——就像 MITS Altair 和 Apple II 一样。精明的消费者可以从 IBM 购买一台基本 PC，并通过在其他地方购买所需的卡来节省资金。1983 年 11 月，Byte列出了 107 家 PC 扩展卡制造商的名单。除了价格更低之外，它们相对于 IBM 自己的设备的优势还包括更大的内存容量、将多种功能压缩到一张卡上（例如串行和并行连接器）以及 IBM 自己完全忽略的功能，例如打印后台处理和语音合成^。54

IBM launched its PC with a small lineup of expansion cards, but it documented the interface so that other companies could produce add-in hardware. A thriving industry soon emerged to supply them—just as it had for the MITS Altair and Apple II. Smart consumers could buy a bare-bones PC from IBM and save money by purchasing the cards they needed elsewhere. In November 1983, Byte produced a list of 107 manufacturers of PC expansion cards. As well as lower prices, their advantages over IBM’s own equipment included more memory capacity, squeezing several functions onto a single card (such as serial and parallel connectors), and capabilities that IBM itself had neglected entirely such as print spooling and speech synthesis.⁵⁴

AST 擅长将多种功能塞进其扩展板，以节省 PC 有限的插槽数量。其 SixPak 卡成为业界畅销产品，因为它将 PC 用户所需的大部分功能塞进一块板子上：内存扩展至 640 KB；串行、操纵杆和并行端口；以及用于保持时间和日期设置的电池供电时钟。

AST specialized in cramming multiple functions onto its expansion boards, to conserve the PC’s limited number of slots. Its SixPak card became the industry’s bestseller by squeezing most of what a PC user needed onto a single board: memory expansion up to the full 640 KB; serial, joystick, and parallel ports; and a battery-backed clock to maintain time and date settings.

一台配备齐全的 PC 所需的其他卡只有磁盘和显示控制器。需要清晰文本的 PC 用户选择了 IBM 的绿屏显示器。与官方 IBM 显示适配器一起使用时，它无法显示任何其他内容。一家名为 Hercules 的公司生产了一种替代品，它不仅可以生成高分辨率图形，还可以生成文本。Hercules 显卡成为了 PC 标准的非官方组成部分，也是第一个未获得 IBM 支持而添加的显卡。

The only other cards needed for a fully equipped PC were disk and display controllers. PC users needing crisp text chose IBM’s green-screen monitor. Used with the official IBM display adapter, it could display nothing else. A company named Hercules produced a replacement that generated high-resolution graphics as well as text. Hercules graphics became an unofficial part of the PC standard, the first to be added without IBM’s backing.

有了更多的空闲插槽，PC 卡生产商就可以提供全新的功能。PC 的内置扬声器只能发出哔哔声或咔嗒声。1987 年发布的 AdLib 声卡增加了音乐功能。它的软件界面被另一家硬件生产商 Creative Labs 抄袭，后者的 SoundBlaster 卡在 20 世纪 90 年代占据了市场主导地位。这又树立了另一个非官方标准。

With more slots free, PC card producers could offer entirely new capabilities. The PC’s built-in speakers were able to do little more than beep or click. The AdLib sound card released in 1987 added musical capabilities. Its software interface was copied by another hardware producer, Creative Labs, whose SoundBlaster cards dominated the market through the 1990s. This set another unofficial standard.

MS-DOS 计算机

MS-DOS Computers

微软与 IBM 达成的协议允许其将大部分相同的代码以 MS-DOS 的形式出售给其他计算机制造商，并最终直接出售给消费者。它变得如此普遍，以至于人们大多只称它为 DOS（我们在这里使用的这个术语包括 PC-DOS 和 MS-DOS）。即使按照 20 世纪 80 年代中期的标准，DOS 也算不上是一个雄心勃勃的操作系统。它仅支持一个用户，并且一次只能运行一个程序。尽管如此，DOS 还是将微软从一家主要销售 BASIC 的公司转变为一家走在个人计算机软件市场主导之路上的公司。

Microsoft’s agreement with IBM let it sell most of the same code to other computer makers, and eventually directly to consumers, as MS-DOS. It became so ubiquitous that people mostly just called it DOS (a term we use here to include both PC-DOS and MS-DOS). Even by the standards of the mid-1980s, DOS was not an ambitious operating system. It supported only one user and could run only one program at a time. Nevertheless, DOS transformed Microsoft from a company that mainly sold BASIC to one well on the road to dominating the market for personal computer software.

IBM PC 的大部分部件（包括 8088 微处理器）都由标准部件组成，可以从目录中订购。1982 年，看到 IBM PC 的成功，其他公司开始订购类似的部件，获得 MS-DOS 许可，并自行制造计算机。这遵循了 CP/M 的模式：一种由不同硬件制造商授权在各种硬件上使用的操作系统。

Most of the IBM PC, including the 8088 microprocessor, consisted of standard parts that could be ordered from a catalog. In 1982, seeing the success of the IBM PC, other companies began to order the similar parts, license MS-DOS, and build their own computers. This followed the model of CP/M: an operating system licensed by different hardware makers to use on a wide range of hardware.

MS-DOS 的早期版本缺少 PC-DOS 的一些重要功能，这意味着许可证必须编写自己的代码来复制 IBM 所做的添加（例如用于配置硬盘驱动器的 FDISK 命令），并且与 CP/M 一样，将源代码调整到他们的硬件。MS-DOS 机器的第一批生产商试图改进 IBM-PC，而不仅仅是复制它。例如，由创建 Commodore PET 的 Chuck Peddle 设计的 Victor 9000 于 1982 年推出。Byte的评论员说他会“选择 Victor”而不是配备相当的 IBM PC，因为它“在显示质量、标准内存量、I/O 端口的标准数量和多功能性以及可用扩展槽数量方面明显更胜一筹。” ⁵⁵

Early versions of MS-DOS lacked some important features of PC-DOS, which meant that licenses had to write their own code to duplicate the additions IBM had made (such as the FDISK command to configure hard disk drives) and, as with CP/M, to adapt the source code to their hardware. The first producers of MS-DOS machines tried to improve on the IBM-PC and not just copy it. For example, the Victor 9000, designed by Chuck Peddle who had created the Commodore PET, was launched in 1982. Byte’s reviewer said he would “take the Victor” over a comparably equipped IBM PC, because it was “clearly superior in quality of display, amount of standard memory, standard number and versatility of I/O ports, and number of available expansion slots.”⁵⁵

由于没有一家公司能够独霸 CP/M 计算机市场，WordStar 等程序必须使用操作系统提供的软件接口来访问屏幕等硬件设备。MS-DOS 市场的发展方式不同。两种系统都提供了程序可以调用的接口来处理磁盘文件、管理外围设备并在屏幕上显示文本。但由于 IBM PC 大获成功，因此在 Microsoft 开始授权 MS-DOS 之前，DOS 计算机就有一个事实上的标准硬件平台。依靠 DOS 来调解与硬件的交互意味着放弃使用 PC 的大多数高级功能，例如图形。即使是用于连接调制解调器或打印机的 IBM PC 串行端口，在由 DOS 控制时也无法发挥其全部功能。希望创建专业应用程序的程序员倾向于绕过 DOS 并直接使用 PC 硬件。直接操作 PC 硬件的程序（如 Lotus 1-2-3）的性能可能远远优于那些没有直接操作 PC 硬件的程序。

Because no single company dominated the market for CP/M computers, programs like WordStar had to use software interfaces provided by the operating system to access hardware devices such as screens. The MS-DOS marketplace evolved differently. Both systems provided interfaces that programs could invoke to work with disk files, manage peripherals, and display text on the screen. But because the IBM PC was a huge hit, there was a de facto standard hardware platform for DOS computers even before Microsoft began to license MS-DOS. Relying on DOS to mediate interactions with the hardware meant foregoing access to most of the PC’s advanced features, such as graphics. Even the IBM PC serial port, used to connect modems or printers, couldn’t work to its full capacity when controlled by DOS. Programmers looking to create professional applications, tended to bypass DOS and work directly with the PC hardware. Programs such as Lotus 1-2-3 that manipulated PC hardware directly could greatly outperform those that did not.

Victor 的电脑无疑是更好的电脑，但大多数考虑购买 MS-DOS 电脑的客户都是为了运行为 IBM PC 编写的软件。同年，面对新的竞争，DEC 开始在低端市场苦苦挣扎，推出了三款个人电脑。这些电脑不仅与 VAX 不兼容，而且尽管采用了 MS-DOS，但它们都与 IBM PC 完全不兼容。其中一款 Rainbow 取得了一定的成功，但无法阻止 IBM 兼容电脑的崛起^。56

Victor’s was undoubtedly the better computer, but most customers considering an MS-DOS computer did so to run software written for the IBM PC. The same year DEC, which had begun to struggle at the lower end of the market in the face of new competition, introduced three personal computers. Not only were these incompatible with the VAX, but despite adopting MS-DOS, none of them were fully compatible with the IBM PC either. One of them, the Rainbow, was a modest success but could not slow down the IBM-compatible juggernaut.⁵⁶

克隆 IBM PC

Cloning the IBM PC

Victor 9000、DEC Rainbow 和其他早期的 MS-DOS 计算机不够成功，软件公司无法根据其优越但不兼容的硬件定制程序。从长远来看，只有与 IBM PC 完全兼容的 MS-DOS 计算机才能生存下来。生产兼容的 PC 比授权 MS-DOS 更难。使计算机成为 IBM PC 的核心是存储在 ROM 芯片上的 BIOS 代码。IBM 拥有该代码。它依靠版权（保护书面作品）而不是专利（保护发明）来防止其 PC 被复制。

The Victor 9000, DEC Rainbow, and other early MS-DOS computers weren’t successful enough for software firms to tailor programs to their superior but incompatible hardware. In the long term, only MS-DOS computers that were fully compatible with the IBM PC could survive. Producing a compatible PC was harder than licensing MS-DOS. The core of what made a computer an IBM PC was the BIOS code stored on a ROM chip. IBM owned that code. It relied on copyright, which protects written works, rather than patents, which protect inventions, to prevent the duplication of its PC.

在 PC 发布前后，德州仪器的三名员工辞职并创办了一家名为 Compaq 的公司。传说 Rod Canion、Jim Harris 和 Bill Murto 在休斯顿一家餐馆的餐巾纸上草拟了一台完全兼容 IBM 的 PC。为了绕过 IBM 对 BIOS 代码的控制，他们使用了逆向工程。一个团队探测了 BIOS 并为其行为编写了详细的功能规范。这些规范被传递给一个完全独立的洁净室团队，给出了 BIOS 的“内容”，但没有给出“如何”。然后，洁净室团队编写了新代码来执行所有相同的操作。这是一种昂贵但合法的方法。

Around the time of the PC’s announcement, three Texas Instruments employees left their jobs and started a company called Compaq. Legend has it that Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto sketched out a fully IBM-compatible PC on a napkin in a Houston restaurant. To get around IBM’s control of the BIOS code, they used reverse engineering. A team probed the BIOS and wrote detailed functional specifications for its behavior. Those specifications were passed to an entirely separate clean room team, giving the “what” of the BIOS but not the “how.” Then the clean room team wrote new code to do all the same things. This was an expensive but legal approach.

1983 年推出的康柏电脑与早期的奥斯本电脑一样便于携带，重量只有 25 磅，它“赋予了举重一词新的含义”。57^真正的吸引力在于它与 IBM PC 兼容，价格更低。康柏成为第一家在成立第一年销售额超过 1 亿美元的初创公司。

The Compaq computer, delivered in 1983, was portable in much the same way as the earlier Osborne—at 25 pounds, it “gave new meaning to the phrase pumping iron.”⁵⁷ The real draw was compatibility with the IBM PC at a lower price. Compaq became the first start-up to exceed $100 million of sales in its first year in business.

在兼容系统开发初期，《PC Magazine》刊登了一篇关于这一现象的专题文章，其中包括对几台机器的测试。其结论是：兼容性范围从“接近但未达标（Compaq）”到“差得远”。58^跟随计算机科学家转行成为行业分析师的 Portia Isaacson 的脚步，行业媒体依靠两项非正式的兼容性测试：这台机器能运行 Lotus 1-2-3 吗？它能运行 Lotus 1-2-3 吗？运行 Bruce Artwick 的飞行模拟器（由 Microsoft 授权）（图 8.5），这款游戏充分发挥了 IBM 硬件的每一个角落，以实现^Byte所说的“出色的图形和真实感”？如果答案是肯定的，那么这台机器就是真正的克隆。飞行模拟器是一项特别残酷的测试。要运行它，必须重新启动 PC，加载游戏代码而不是 DOS。加载时，它显示奇怪的图形，因为 Atwick 使用显示器作为工作内存，将游戏压缩到仅 64 KB 的 RAM 中。

Early in the development of compatible systems, PC Magazine ran a feature on the phenomenon, including tests on several machines. Its conclusion: compatibility ranged from “close but no cigar [the Compaq] to not even close.”⁵⁸ Following the lead of Portia Isaacson, a computer scientist turned industry analyst, the trade press relied on two informal tests for compatibility: would the machine run Lotus 1-2-3? Would it run Bruce Artwick’s Flight Simulator, licensed by Microsoft (figure 8.5), a game that exercised every nook and cranny of the IBM hardware to achieve what Byte called “fantastic graphics and realism”? If the answers were Yes and Yes, the machine was a true clone.⁵⁹ Flight Simulator was a particularly brutal test. To run it, a PC had to be rebooted, loading game code instead of DOS. While loading, it displayed weird graphics, because Atwick used the display as working memory to squeeze the game into just 64 KB of RAM.

由于 PC 视频卡、磁盘控制器和其他组件随时可用，因此进入克隆业务变得更加容易，因为无需设计或委托可以从目录中订购的产品。 AST 于 1986 年迈出了这一步，它制造了可插入其 SixPak 多功能卡的主板。它开始销售组装好的计算机，最终成为十大供应商之一。 AST 编写了自己的 BIOS，但是，在 Phoenix Technologies 对 IBM BIOS 进行逆向工程并开始将兼容芯片作为标准部件销售后，甚至编写 BIOS 也变得没有必要了。 PC 主板成为可从十几个不同供应商处购买的另一种商品。 PC 克隆的闸门打开了。业界最成功的期刊《PC Magazine》捕捉到了这一转变，1986 年它将其副标题从“IBM 个人计算机独立指南”更改为“IBM 标准个人计算独立指南”。

The ready availability of PC video cards, disk controllers, and other components made it easier to get into the clone business as there was no need to design or commission what could be ordered from a catalog. AST took that step in 1986 by building motherboards to plug its SixPak multifunction cards into. It began to sell fully assembled computers, eventually becoming one of the top ten suppliers. AST wrote its own BIOS, but even that became unnecessary after Phoenix Technologies reverse engineered the IBM BIOS and started selling compatible chips as a standard part. The PC motherboard became just one more commodity available from a dozen different suppliers. The floodgates opened for PC clones. The shift was captured by PC Magazine, the industry’s most successful periodical, when in 1986 it changed its subtitle from “the independent guide to IBM personal computers” to “the independent guide to IBM-standard personal computing.”

PC 兼容机价格的不断下降使其市场从企业和富人扩展到小型企业、学校和中等收入的业余爱好者。这种转变在英国最为明显，因为英国的低收入和高价格将 IBM PC 的初始市场限制在企业买家。

The ever-falling price of PC compatibles extended their market from corporations and wealthy individuals to small businesses, schools, and hobbyists with middling incomes. This shift was most dramatic in Britain, where lower incomes and higher prices had limited the IBM PC’s initial market to corporate buyers.

1986 年，安斯特拉德公司借助其文字处理器的成功，推出了 PC 1512，如图8.6所示。安斯特拉德公司再次运用了降低家用电脑成本的技术。一位工程师回忆说，他打开 IBM PC 时发现“这些离散设备到处都是，整个该死的东西里没有一个定制设备。它有大量的电路板，里面塞满了芯片。所以我们认为，通过设计我们自己的门阵列，我们可以在这里节省很多钱。” ⁶⁰他们将图形和打印机端口等功能集成到主板上，以消除扩展卡和插槽。这种集成大大降低了成本，但牺牲了标准 PC 的一些可定制性。在亚洲进行大规模生产创造了进一步的经济效益。⁶¹

In 1986 Amstrad, building on the success of its word processors, introduced the PC 1512, shown in figure 8.6. Amstrad again applied the techniques that had brought down the cost of home computers. An engineer recalled opening up an IBM PC to discover “these discrete devices all over the place, and not one custom device in the whole bloody thing. It had massive boards stuffed full of chips. So we thought we can save a lot of money here by designing our own gate arrays.”⁶⁰ They integrated functions like graphics and printer ports onto the motherboard to eliminate expansion cards and slots. This integration brought down costs dramatically but sacrificed some of the customizability of a standard PC. Manufacturing a large production run in Asia created further economies.⁶¹

PC 1512 有点脆弱，功能落后于高端机器，但它的售价为 399 英镑，包括屏幕、键盘和一个软盘驱动器。这使它进入了家用电脑领域，价格不到之前英国最便宜的 PC 克隆产品的一半。在评测这台机器时，Guy Kewney 总结道：“就我而言，我无法解释为什么你会想要标准 PC 的其他版本……这台机器速度快，比任何其他 PC 都更容易使用，比任何具有相同规格的产品都便宜。” ⁶²在接下来的两年里，Amstrad 销售的 PC 数量远远超过 IBM 在英国和德国的销售量，在德国，它被重新命名为施耐德型号。在美国，家用电脑制造商 Commodore 和 Atari 都推出了价格低廉的 PC 兼容产品线^。63

The PC 1512 was a little flimsy and lagged behind the capabilities of high-end machines, but it sold for £399 including a screen, keyboard, and one floppy drive. That put it into home computer territory, less than half the cost of the cheapest PC clone previously available in Britain. Reviewing the machine, Guy Kewney concluded “For the life of me, I can’t suggest why you would want any other version of the standard PC … the machine is fast, easier to use than any other PC, cheaper than anything with the same specification.”⁶² Over the next two years, Amstrad sold far more PCs than IBM had ever managed in Britain, and in Germany where it was rebadged as a Schneider model. In the US, home computer producers Commodore and Atari both launched budget-priced PC compatible lines.⁶³

PC AT—新标准

The PC AT—A New Standard

每款新的 IBM PC 型号都设定了新的事实上的标准，而这些标准很快就被声称“100% 兼容”的克隆产品所复制。其中最具影响力的，也是现代 PC 发展的起点，是 1984 年推出的 IBM PC AT。IBM 以更快的 16 位 Intel 处理器 80286 为基础制造了这款机器。这款机器的价格高于最初的 PC，这款没有屏幕、配置齐全的型号售价为 5,795 美元，但 AT 包含更多标准配置。它有 16 位扩展槽和软盘，可以存储更多信息（1.2 MB），可以处理更大的文件。IBM 进行了许多小调整，从更改键盘布局到添加内置时钟和电池供电的内存，以便在计算机关闭时存储时间和配置详细信息。

Each new IBM PC model set a new de facto standard, which was quickly replicated by clones claiming to be “100 percent compatible.” The most influential, and the point from which modern PCs evolved, was the IBM PC AT launched in 1984. IBM built the machine around a faster 16-bit Intel processor, the 80286. The price was higher than the original PC, $5,795 for an otherwise well-equipped model with no screen, but the AT included a lot more standard equipment. It had 16-bit expansion slots and floppy disks that stored more information, a full 1.2 MB, to work on larger files. IBM made many little tweaks, from changing the keyboard layout to adding a built-in clock and battery-powered memory to store time and configuration details when the computer was turned off.

AT代表先进技术。它的性能更接近小型计算机而非业余 PC。由于其新处理器可以处理高达 16 MB 的 RAM 和强大的新指令模式，AT 专为多任务、多用户操作系统而设计。然而，实际上，其用户大多仍使用 MS-DOS，这意味着 AT 只不过是原始 PC 的快速版本。

AT stood for advanced technology. Its performance was closer to a minicomputer’s than a hobbyist PC’s. Because its new processor could handle up to 16 MB of RAM and a powerful new instruction mode, the AT was designed for multitasking, multiuser operating systems. In practice, however, its users mostly stuck with MS-DOS, which meant using the AT as little more than a fast version of the original PC.

AT 受到了热烈的欢迎。《PC Magazine》称其为“超高性能技术奇迹”，让克隆机制造商不得不另谋高就。它惊叹道：“这款创新机器如此出色，IBM 就像是在用大炮瓮中捉鳖。”只有 AT&T 和“管理精湛的 Compaq”有机会与之抗衡。64 对于一家公司来说，设计一个^AT克隆机确实是一项艰巨的任务，但在新兴的 PC 零件制造商生态系统中，这只不过是一个障碍。在一年之内，AT 的每个部件都被多家供应商复制，克隆公司的数量也比以往任何时候都多。

The AT was rapturously received. PC Magazine called it an “ultra high performance technological marvel” that would leave the clone makers looking for new jobs. “This innovative machine is so good,” it marveled, “that IBM is shooting fish in a barrel. With a cannon.” Only AT&T and “perhaps management skilled Compaq” stood a chance against it.⁶⁴ Engineering an AT clone would indeed have been a challenging task for a single company, but spread across the emerging ecosystem of PC parts manufacturers, it was no more than a speedbump. Within a year every part of the AT had been duplicated by multiple suppliers, and there were more clone companies than ever.

克隆制造商的“涡轮 AT”比真正的产品更快。事实证明，PC AT 的设计运行速度为 8 MHz，但由于公司担心切入更大型 IBM 计算机市场，最初只能使用 6 MHz 的计时晶体。克隆制造商没有这样的担忧。在接下来的几年里，他们将性能提升到了原始 IBM 系统之上。例如，IBM 提供了增强型显卡，可产生更高的分辨率和更多的颜色。原始显卡速度慢且价格昂贵，但到 1987 年，许多 PC 用户开始使用廉价的克隆卡（包括图形专家 ATI 的一些首批产品）升级他们的系统，从而提供更好的性能、更大的灵活性和更高的分辨率。

The clone makers’ “turbo ATs” were faster than the real thing. It turned out that the PC AT was designed to run at 8 MHz, but because of corporate worries about cutting into the market for bigger IBM computers had initially been hobbled with a 6 MHz timing crystal. Clone makers had no such concerns. Over the next few years they pushed performance further beyond the original IBM systems. For example, IBM offered an enhanced graphics card generating higher resolutions and more colors. The original card was slow and expensive, but by 1987 many PC users were upgrading their systems with cheap clone cards (including some of graphics specialist ATI’s first products) providing improved performance, more flexibility, and higher resolutions.

局域网以太网

Ethernet for Local Area Networks

到 20 世纪 80 年代中期，无论企业计算机管理人员是否喜欢，他们已经接受了 PC 是标准办公设备这一事实。为了使 PC 更加有用并将它们连接到更大的系统，公司开始在局域网(LAN) 中将它们连接在一起。到 1984 年，IBM PC 的 LAN 项目已超过 20 个。65^许多项目依赖于速度较慢、价格较低的串行连接，但速度最快、最有效的连接机制称为以太网。

By the mid-1980s, corporate computing managers had accepted that PCs were standard office equipment, whether they liked it or not. To make PCs more useful and connect them to larger systems, companies started to connect them together in local area networks (LANs). By 1984, over 20 LAN projects for the IBM PCs were being advertised.⁶⁵ Many relied on slower, cheaper serial connections, but the fastest and most effective used a connection mechanism called Ethernet.

罗伯特·梅特卡夫和戴维·博格斯于 1973 年构想出了以太网。他们在施乐公司位于硅谷的帕洛阿尔托研究中心 (PARC) 工作，下一章我们会详细介绍。梅特卡夫是麻省理工学院 MAC 项目的校友，曾帮助将其 PDP-10 连接到 ARPANET。1972 年，他成为“PARC 的网络专家”，利用他的经验将其 PDP-10 克隆 MAXC 连接到^ARPANET。66

Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs had conceived Ethernet in 1973. They worked at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in Silicon Valley, about which we have more to say in the next chapter. Metcalfe was an alumnus of MIT’s project MAC, having helped link its PDP-10 to the ARPANET. In 1972 he became “the networking guy at PARC,” using his experience to connect its PDP-10 clone, MAXC, to the ARPANET.⁶⁶

施乐公司真正的重点是大楼内部联网，将单用户计算机相互连接，并将其连接到高质量打印机。ARPANET 模型及其昂贵的 IMP 显然并不合适。PARC 将几台 Data General 小型计算机以星型拓扑结构联网，但梅特卡夫发现这不适合机器经常连接和断开的办公室。67^相反，他想起了使用无线电信号连接夏威夷群岛计算机的 ALOHAnet 系统。68^对于他的办公室网络，梅特卡夫使用了相同的方法，但用廉价的同轴电缆代替了承载 ALOHAnet 无线电信号的“以太”。只需接入电缆，即可将计算机添加到这个以太网。1973 年 5 月，他展示了这样的系统可以处理大量流量而不会过载。梅特卡夫与大卫博格斯合作，在次年就让网络运行起来。他回忆说，以太网的速度为每秒 300 万比特，这在当时是闻所未闻的，因为“阿帕网 (ARPANET) 的电话电路速度为每秒 50 千比特 (Kbps)，已经算很快了。” ⁶⁹以太网首次取得商业成功是在 1979 年，当时数字设备公司 (Digital Equipment Corporation)、英特尔 (Intel) 和施乐 (Xerox) 联手建立了速度更快的每秒 1000 万比特版本作为标准。

The real focus at Xerox was on networking inside the building, to connect single-user computers to each other and to a high-quality printer. The ARPANET model, with its expensive IMPs, was clearly not appropriate. PARC networked several Data General minicomputers in a star-shaped topology, but Metcalfe found this inappropriate for the office where machines are connected and disconnected frequently.⁶⁷ Instead, he recalled the ALOHAnet system that used radio signals to link computers on the Hawaiian islands.⁶⁸ For his office network, Metcalfe used the same approach but substituted a cheap coaxial cable for the “ether” that carried ALOHAnet’s radio signals. A computer could be added to this Ethernet simply by tapping into the cable. In May 1973, he showed that such a system could handle a lot of traffic without becoming overloaded. Metcalfe worked with David Boggs to get a network running by the following year. He recalls that its speed, 3 million bits per second, was unheard of at the time, when “the 50-kilobit-per-second (Kbps) telephone circuits of the ARPANET were considered fast.”⁶⁹ Ethernet’s first commercial success came in 1979, when Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel, and Xerox joined to establish a faster, 10 million bits per second version, as a standard.

在高性能局域网市场，以太网的主要对手是 IBM 的令牌环技术。与以太网不同，即使网络使用量激增，该技术也能保证最低级别的性能。为了防止冲突，通道由持有虚拟令牌的计算机控制，就像早期的铁路工程师在进入无信号轨道时必须持有物理令牌一样。

In the market for performance LANs, Ethernet’s main opponent was IBM’s token ring technology. Unlike Ethernet, this offered a guaranteed minimum level of performance even when network usage spiked. To prevent collisions, the channel was controlled by whichever computer held a virtual token, just as early railroads engineers had to hold physical tokens when proceeding onto unsignaled tracks.

20 世纪 80 年代末的联网 PC 并未连接到互联网。PC 网络提供两项基本服务：文件共享和打印机共享。文件共享让部门中的每个人都可以访问共享硬盘，以便协作并将工作存储在可访问且经常备份的位置。打印机共享让公司可以购买和支持少量快速、昂贵的打印机，而不是安装一台到每台 PC。与 20 世纪 70 年代通过“哑终端”或“玻璃电传打字机”访问的分时主机相比，这些联网 PC 为用户提供了更多的自主权和独立性。

The networked PCs of the late 1980s were not connected to the Internet. PC networks provided two basic services: file sharing and printer sharing. File sharing let everyone in a department access a shared hard drive, to collaborate and store their work in an accessible and frequently backed up location. Printer sharing let companies purchase and support a small number of fast, expensive printers instead of fitting one to each PC. These networked PCs gave their users a lot more autonomy and independence than the timeshared mainframes accessed through “dumb terminals” or “glass Teletypes” of the 1970s.

到 1989 年，占据了超过一半业务的公司是位于盐湖城地区的 Novell。Novell 的 Netware 是一个复杂的操作系统，能够将 PC 变成以太网网络的集线器。它通常会完全取代文件服务器计算机上的 MS-DOS。Novell 最初将其软件视为其以太网硬件销售业务的附加产品，但在该市场上与 3Com 竞争激烈。在采取专注于软件的新战略后，它开始腾飞。Netware 286 旨在利用 PC AT 兼容机的功能，其中包括一个实用程序，用于编译驱动程序，该驱动程序经过定制，可在特定网卡和计算机配置下高效运行。竞争很快将以太网卡变成了廉价的商品。Netware 仍然很昂贵。为了确保有能力的网络技术人员的供应，Novell 推出了一个受欢迎的认证计划。获得认证的 Novell 工程师找工作不难。后来，其他供应商（包括 Microsoft）也推出了类似的计划。

The company that emerged with over half the business by 1989 was Novell, located in the Salt Lake City area. Novell’s Netware was a complex operating system able to turn a PC into the hub of an Ethernet network. It usually replaced MS-DOS entirely on that file server computer. Novell originally treated its software as an add-on to its business of selling Ethernet hardware but struggled against 3Com in that market. It took off after adopting a new strategy of focusing on the software. Netware 286, designed to exploit the power of PC AT compatibles, included a utility to compile a driver tailored to run efficiently with a particular network card and computer configuration. Competition soon turned Ethernet cards into cheap commodity items. Netware stayed expensive. To ensure a supply of competent network technicians, Novell launched a popular certification program. A Certified Novell Engineer would have little trouble finding work. Similar schemes were later introduced by other vendors, including Microsoft.

尽管 Netware 已不再使用，但以太网仍然是有线局域网的主导标准。自 20 世纪 90 年代中期以来，大多数 PC 主板上都内置了以太网连接器。如今，典型的连接速率为每秒 1 GB，比 20 世纪 80 年代初首次商业化的版本快 100 倍。

Although Netware is no longer used, Ethernet remains the dominant standard for wired local area networking. Ethernet connectors have been built onto most PC motherboards since the mid-1990s. Today the typical connection rate is a gigabyte a second, one hundred times faster than the version first commercialized back in the early 1980s.

PS/2：IBM 失去控制权

The PS/2: IBM Loses Its Grip

1987 年 4 月推出的新款 PS/2 产品线基于 IBM 专有技术，受专利保护。它旨在扫除整个 IBM PC 系列及其模仿者，就像 System/360 取代了 IBM 所有现有计算机和外围设备一样。克隆制造商必须支付许可费。

The new PS/2 line, launched in April 1987, was built around proprietary IBM technology, protected by patents. It was intended to sweep away the entire IBM PC family and its imitators, just as System/360 had replaced all IBM’s existing computers and peripherals. Clone makers would have to pay for licenses.

新机器设计精美，无需螺丝刀即可拆卸。IBM 在主板上集成了更多功能，包括图形处理。它将电源开关移到了机器的前面，改变了键盘连接器，并增加了鼠标插槽。与使用 5 1/4 英寸软盘的早期 PC 不同，所有 PS/2 机器都使用 3 1/2 英寸磁盘（这些磁盘被封装在硬塑料外壳中，不再是软盘，而是被称为就像 IBM 所说的微型磁盘一样。以前的 PC 图形效果一般，而新的视频图形阵列 (VGA) 可以输出清晰的文本和详细的图形，色彩生动逼真。这让企业界的商业演示和图表变得生动有趣，并最终使 PC 成为首选的视频游戏平台。

The new machines were beautifully engineered, designed so that they could be taken apart without using a screwdriver. IBM built more capabilities, including graphics, onto their motherboards. It moved power switches to the fronts of the machines, changed their keyboard connectors, and added sockets for mice. Unlike earlier PCs, which used 5 1/4-inch floppy disks, all the PS/2 machines used 3 1/2-inch disks (which, being enclosed in a hard plastic shell, were no longer floppy and were known as micro diskettes in IBM speak). Whereas previous PC graphics were mediocre, the new video graphics array (VGA) output crisp text and detailed graphics with vivid and realistic colors. This perked up business presentations and charts around the corporate world and eventually established the PC as the video gaming platform of choice.

最根本的改变都发生在高端型号上。PC AT 中的 16 位扩展槽直接与处理器耦合，随着处理器速度的提高，兼容性问题随之产生。IBM 将其替换为一种新的、经过精心专利的 32 位替代方案，称为 MCA，即微通道架构。它也用于一些更大型的计算机，并包含强大的功能，让人想起经典 IBM 大型机的内置通道。两个设备（例如网卡和磁盘驱动器控制器）可以交换数据，而无需占用中央处理器，其速度比处理器本身的处理速度更快。新卡应该更容易配置。设置传统的 PC 卡需要花费数小时摆弄开关、驱动程序和操作系统文件来确定设置。相比之下，MCA 卡将设置存储在一种特殊的内存中，操作系统可以自动设置。

The most fundamental changes were made to the higher-end models. The 16-bit expansion slots in the PC AT had been coupled directly to the processor, creating compatibility problems as processors were sped up. IBM replaced this with a new, and meticulously patented, 32-bit alternative called MCA, for micro channel architecture. It was used in some bigger computers, too, and included powerful features recalling the channels built into classic IBM mainframes. Two devices, such as a network card and a disk drive controller, could exchange data without tying up the central processor, at speeds faster than the processor itself could handle. The new cards were supposed to be easier to configure. Setting up a conventional PC card took hours of fiddling with switches, drivers, and operating system files to determine settings. In contrast, MCA cards stored settings in a special kind of memory where they could be set automatically by an operating system.

IBM 预计克隆制造商，甚至扩展卡生产商，将开始支付许可费来复制 MCA 总线。这是有道理的。克隆行业已经大幅降低了成本，但在 PC 发展的早期，其最大的创新是在机箱上安装手柄，使其便于携带。当然，它的客户将继续要求复制 IBM 的最新型号。Gartner Group 的一位分析师曾说：“如果 IBM 的‘克隆’公司希望保持其在企业市场的份额，他们就必须与 IBM 的新个人电脑架构相匹配。” ⁷⁰ IBM 利用这一点，试图从克隆制造商那里获得惩罚性条款。为了获得新技术的使用权，他们必须向 IBM 支付每台 PS/2 兼容计算机销售价格的 5% 的费用。据报道，IBM 甚至要求对已售出的 PC 支付追溯版税，对于像 Tandy 或 Compaq 这样的公司来说，这将达到数百万美元^。71

IBM expected clone makers, and even expansion card producers, to start paying license fees to copy the MCA bus. This made sense. The clone industry had driven down costs ferociously, but during the early years of the PC its biggest innovation had been putting a handle on the box to make it portable. Surely its customers would continue to demand copies of IBM’s latest models. A Gartner Group analyst was quoted saying “if the IBM ‘clone’ companies hope to keep their share of the corporate market, they’ll have to match IBM’s new personal computer architecture.”⁷⁰ Exploiting this, IBM tried to extract punitive terms from clone makers. To gain access to the new technology they would have to give IBM up to 5 percent of the sales price of every PS/2 compatible computer. IBM was even reported to have demanded retroactive royalties on PCs already sold, which for a company like Tandy or Compaq would run to millions of dollars.⁷¹

操作系统/2

OS/2

与 System/360 一样，IBM 的新产品系列也是在宣布新操作系统的同时推出的。OS/2 由 IBM 和 Microsoft 联合开发。它承诺比 MS-DOS 具有真正的优势，包括能够执行多任务程序和访问兆字节内存。在报道发布会时，《纽约时报》援引了一位 Microsoft 高管的话，称 PS/2 是“个人电脑短暂历史上最重要的产品”，并确立了“未来十年的计算机架构”。72 ^OS /2 可以在其他公司生产的计算机上使用，但 IBM 强调了其扩展版的优势，该版本具有与 IBM 数据库和大型机网络的大量连接。而最初的 PC 是一个边缘项目，开发时几乎没有投入从 IBM 高层管理的角度来看，PS/2 在 IBM 的大型系统应用程序架构(SAA) 战略中发挥了至关重要的作用。没有其他公司是大型机、小型计算机、文字处理器和个人计算机的领先供应商。如果客户从互连各种规模的 IBM 计算机中获得切实利益，那么证明其较高价格的合理性将更加容易。SAA 应该为整个 IBM 系列提供通用的用户界面、编程接口、网络协议和办公软件。

Like System/360, IBM’s new range was launched with the announcement of a new operating system. OS/2 was developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft. It promised real benefits over MS-DOS, including the ability to multitask programs and access megabytes of memory. Reporting the launch, the New York Times quoted a Microsoft executive saying that PS/2 was “the most important introduction in the short history of personal computers,” and had established “the computer architecture for the next decade.”⁷² OS/2 could be used on computers made by other companies, but IBM played up the benefits of its Extended Edition, which was full of connections to IBM databases and mainframe networks. Whereas the original PC had been a marginal project, developed with little input from IBM’s senior management, PS/2 played a crucial part in IBM’s grand system application architecture (SAA) strategy. No other firm was a leading supplier of mainframes, minicomputers, word processors, and personal computers. Justifying its higher prices, particularly for smaller computers where competition was tougher, would be easier if customers obtained tangible benefits from interconnecting IBM computers of all sizes. SAA was supposed to provide common user interfaces, programming interfaces, networking protocols, and office software across the entire IBM range.

和之前的 OS/360 一样，当新硬件开始交付时，OS/2 尚未准备就绪。初始版本晚了 8 个月才发布，缺少关键功能，包括承诺的图形用户界面（称为 Presentation Manager）。第一个完整版本于 1988 年 10 月发布。IBM 曾预计内存价格会下降，但生产短缺反而导致 1980 年代后期全球 RAM 价格飙升，这意味着运行 OS/2 所需的 3 MB 额外 RAM 使 PC 价格增加了约 1,000 美元。这减缓了 OS/2 的采用速度，即使是高端 PS/2 电脑的购买者也是如此。

Like OS/360 before it, OS/2 wasn’t ready by the time the new hardware began delivery. The initial release, shipped eight months late, lacked key features including a promised graphical user interface called Presentation Manager. The first full version arrived in October 1988. IBM had expected memory prices to fall, but production shortfalls instead caused a worldwide spike in RAM prices in the late 1980s, meaning that the 3 MB of extra RAM needed to run OS/2 added about $1,000 to the price of a PC. This slowed the adoption of OS/2, even among purchasers of high-end PS/2 computers.

新型计算机公司

New Kinds of Computer Firm

大多数克隆制造商都不愿意向 IBM 付费使用其 PS/2 机器的专利元素，尽管他们可以模仿其中的一些功能。例如，机箱制造商开始为新的 3 1/2 英寸磁盘驱动器提供托架。显卡制造商生产的视频卡复制并改进了 IBM 新的 VGA 输出功能。PC 行业没有获得 IBM 微通道架构的许可，而是采取了一项出人意料的策略：合作将 PC AT 开发成与 PS/2 相媲美的产品。PS/2 推出前一年，他们朝着这个方向迈出了第一步。康柏厌倦了等待 IBM 制造新产品来复制，并推出了 Deskpro 386，将英特尔最新的处理器强行塞入现有的 PC 架构。73^当时这看起来像是一个权宜之计，无法充分利用新芯片的全部功能。一篇评论认为，^尽管“考虑到 80386 和无限的自由，一个称职的工程师不会想出这种设计”，但康柏还是从现有标准中获得了“比预期更好的性能”。74 《新闻周刊》称其为“经过计算的风险”，并警告说“客户可能会选择等待 IBM，担心任何其他计算机都会不兼容。” ⁷⁵事实上，Deskpro 386 大获成功。康柏的做法很快就被其他克隆制造商效仿。

Most clone makers were unwilling to pay IBM to use the patented elements of its PS/2 machines, although they were able to mimic some of their features. Case manufacturers, for example, began to feature bays for the new 3 1/2-inch disk drives. Graphics card makers produced video cards that duplicated, and improved upon, the capabilities of IBM’s new VGA output. Instead of licensing IBM’s micro channel architecture the PC industry followed an unexpected strategy: working together to evolve the PC AT into something competitive with PS/2. An initial step in this direction had taken place the year before PS/2 launched. Compaq got tired of waiting for IBM to make something new to copy and launched the Deskpro 386, which shoehorned Intel’s newest processor into the existing PC architecture.⁷³ At the time this looked like a stop-gap solution, unable to harness the full power of the new chip. A review concluded that although “given an 80386 and unlimited freedom, a competent … engineer would not have come up with this design,” Compaq had nevertheless extracted “better performance than expected out of existing standards.”⁷⁴ Newsweek called it a “calculated risk” and warned that “customers may choose to wait for IBM, fearing that any other computer will be incompatible.”⁷⁵ In fact the Deskpro 386 was a big hit. Compaq’s approach was soon duplicated by other clone makers.

康柏是德克萨斯州芯片和 PC 公司集群的一部分，是第一批 PC 兼容机生产商的代表。它以同样的方式做着与 IBM PC 部门相同的事情，但更积极地降低成本。选择康柏而不是 IBM 的客户知道，他们可以用更少的钱买到一台顶级机器。康柏以其工程人才为傲，这使它领先于其他克隆公司公司引入新功能。当小型计算机陷入困境时，康柏最终收购了 DEC，以进一步增强其技术能力。与 IBM 一样，康柏编写了自己的 BIOS 并在自己的工厂批量生产机器。与 IBM 一样，它通过经销商网络销售，经销商加价以弥补自己的成本。事实上，康柏决定只通过 IBM 已经授权销售其自有 PC 的经销商销售，甚至聘请了组建其 PC 经销商网络的 IBM 高管。76创办像^康柏这样的公司需要大量投资来设计计算机、购买工厂或建立合同制造安排以及建立经销商网络。

Compaq, part of a cluster of chip and PC companies based in Texas, exemplified the first wave of PC compatible producers. It did the same things as IBM’s PC division, in the same way, but more aggressively at lower costs. Customers who chose Compaq over IBM knew they were getting a top-quality machine for a bit less money. Compaq prided itself on its engineering talent, which put it ahead of other clone companies in introducing new features. Once minicomputers fell on hard times, Compaq eventually purchased DEC to further enhance its technological capabilities. Like IBM, Compaq wrote its own BIOS and mass produced its machines in its own factory. Like IBM, it sold through networks of dealers who added a hefty markup to cover their own costs. In fact, Compaq decided to sell only through dealers that IBM had already authorized to carry its own PCs, even hiring the IBM executive who had put its PC dealer network together.⁷⁶ Starting a firm like Compaq would require a major investment to design a computer, buy a factory or set up contract manufacturing arrangements, and build a dealer network.

IBM 的键盘、机箱、主板和扩展卡都是定制的。Compaq 也是如此。随着 PC 组件行业的发展，这些组件（如磁盘、内存芯片和处理器）成为可以从目录中订购的标准组件。知识水平一般的计算机用户通过自己组装计算机来省钱。组装过程可以在几个小时内完成，使用的工具也仅仅是十字头螺丝刀。更有商业头脑的人会根据朋友的订单组装 PC，并最终成立计算机公司。在全国范围内，每个小镇或城市社区至少有一家店面 PC“螺丝刀店”，根据订单组装新机器，同时维修和支持旧机器。有些人通过使用盗版 DOS 来省钱。向标准组件组装的转变促进了组件制造业向亚洲的外流，因为供应商可以专注于低成本的细分市场，而无需设计或销售整台计算机。

IBM’s keyboard, case, motherboard, and expansion cards were custom built. So were Compaq’s. As the PC components industry developed these items, like disks, memory chips, and processors, became standard items that could be ordered from a catalog. Moderately knowledgeable computer users saved money by building their own computers. This could be done in a couple of hours using no tool more exotic than a Phillips head screwdriver. The more commercially-minded built PCs to order for their friends and eventually set up computer businesses. Across the country, each small town or city neighborhood had at least one storefront PC “screwdriver shop,” building new machines to order while servicing and supporting old ones. Some saved money by using pirated copies of DOS. The shift to assembly of standard components facilitated the exodus of component manufacturing to Asia, as suppliers could focus on low cost niches without needing to engineer or market a whole computer.

到 20 世纪 80 年代末，典型的主力商用 PC 是 IBM PC AT 兼容机，由少量标准部件组装而成。其中一个部件是主板，处理器和内存芯片插入其中。主板与电源一起拧入机箱。典型配置在其三个插槽中装有显示适配器、用于驱动打印机和调制解调器的组合并行和串行卡以及磁盘控制器卡。硬盘和软盘占据了两个标准尺寸的驱动器托架。PC 克隆制造商只需采购一个定制部件：一个与 IBM 徽章大小和形状相同的徽章，将其粘贴在机箱上的标准凹陷处。

By the end of the 1980s the typical workhorse business PC was an IBM PC AT compatible assembled from a handful of standard parts. One was the motherboard, into which a processor and memory chips were inserted. This was screwed into a case, along with a power supply. A typical configuration filled three of its slots with a display adapter, a combined parallel and serial card to drive a printer and modem, and a disk controller card. Hard and floppy disks filled two drive bays of standard dimensions. A PC clone maker needed to procure only one custom part: a badge the same size and shape as the IBM badge, to be stuck into the standardized depression on the case.

这种新型计算机公司中最成功的是迈克尔·戴尔于 1984 年在德克萨斯州奥斯汀的大学宿舍里创立的。随着需求的增长，他从大学辍学，开始在全国范围内做广告。到 1988 年，戴尔计算机公司首次公开募股，成为美国发展最快的企业之一。77^像戴尔这样的公司的兴衰不是基于他们的工程人才（他们几乎没有），而是基于他们能否成功获得或直接进口零部件、销售和服务运营的质量以及分销系统的效率。与康柏不同，戴尔直接向客户销售，省去了通过经销商和分销商工作的管理费用。这也减少了未售出电脑的仓储成本。戴尔只在客户配置并付款后才组装电脑。电脑几天内就能送到。除了处理器之外，每个 PC 硬件组件都可以从几十家硬件供应商中选择。竞争、规模经济和专业化以惊人的速度压低了组件价格。一台从生产到销售需要几个月时间的电脑，在运输过程中会损失很大一部分价值。

The most successful of this new breed of computer companies was founded by Michael Dell in 1984 from his college dorm room in Austin, Texas. As demand grew he dropped out of college and began to advertise nationally. By 1988 the Dell Computer Corporation had made an initial public offering and was one of America’s fastest growing businesses.⁷⁷ Firms like Dell rose and fell not on the basis of their engineering talent, of which they had little, but on the basis of their success in obtaining or directly importing components, the quality of their sales and service operations, and the efficiency of their distribution systems. Unlike Compaq, Dell sold direct to its customers, eliminating the overhead of working through dealers and distributors. That also reduced the costs associated with warehousing unsold computers. Dell assembled a computer only after it had been configured and paid for by a customer. It arrived within a few days. Each PC hardware component, except for the processor, could be chosen from dozens of hardware suppliers. Competition, economies of scale, and specialization drove down component prices at a startling rate. A computer that took a couple of months to go from production to sale would lose a significant fraction of its value on the way.

随着用户和软件供应商越来越依赖 PC 平台，放弃 PC 的成本也随之上升，而继续使用 PC 的好处则越来越多。甚至 Digital Research 也最终放弃了 CP/M，转而尝试销售兼容 MS-DOS 的操作系统。只有标准操作系统制造商微软和英特尔的产品出现在大多数 PC 中，英特尔在很大程度上成功阻止了其他公司制造其处理器的可行克隆版。随着 PC 价格暴跌，微软从每台 PC 销售中赚取的利润都超过了制造电脑的公司。微软于 1986 年首次公开募股，当时公司拥有约 1000 名员工。在 18 个月内，公司员工人数翻了一番，然后又翻了一番。这种指数级增长一直持续到 2001 年。由于微软向程序员、经理、销售人员和其他长期员工授予股票期权的做法，微软最终创造了比历史上任何其他公司都多的百万富翁。授予股票期权的做法始于硅谷芯片公司，但正是微软确立了编程工作可以成为一条可靠的致富途径的理念。七年后，员工可以利用这笔意外之财退休或者创办自己的公司。

As users and software suppliers became ever more committed to the PC platform the costs of switching away from it rose, while the benefits of remaining within it increased. Even Digital Research eventually gave up on CP/M and tried to sell MS-DOS compatible operating systems. The only companies whose products were found in most PCs were Microsoft, maker of the standard operating system, and Intel, which was largely successful in stopping other firms from making viable clones of its processors. As PC prices plummeted, Microsoft stood to make more money on each PC sale than the company building the computer. Microsoft made its initial public offering of stock in 1986 when the company had about a thousand employees. Within eighteen months it had doubled, then doubled again. This exponential growth continued until 2001. Thanks to its practice of granting stock options to programmers, managers, sales staff, and other permanent employees Microsoft eventually created more millionaires than any other company in history. The practice of granting stock options had begun with Silicon Valley chip firms, but it was Microsoft that established the idea that a programming job could be a reliable pathway to wealth. After seven years, employees could use their windfalls to retire or start their own companies.

便携式电脑

Portable PCs

到 20 世纪 80 年代末，便携式 PC 变得越来越实用。Osborne 和 Compaq 的早期便携式电脑是全尺寸电脑，配有手柄和微型内置显示器。它们可以从办公室拖到家里或工作场所。可编程计算器是真正的便携式电脑，可以使用电池，但屏幕和键盘都很小。最便携的带有真正键盘的电脑是 Radio Shack 的 TRS-80 Model 100，由日本京瓷公司开发（图 8.7）。它使用标准电池可运行约 20 小时，重量仅为 3 磅。实现这些目标需要做出一些重大妥协 - 没有内置磁盘驱动器，只有 8 到 32 KB 的内存，屏幕只能显示 8 行文本。它最热心的用户是记者，他们以前通过电话线口述稿件。现在，他们可以使用 Model 100 在现场撰写故事，并使用其内置调制解调器进行归档。除了文本编辑器外，它的 ROM 芯片还包含用于维护待办事项列表和地址簿的程序，以及 Microsoft BASIC，后者支持自定义应用程序，例如数据记录和工业控制。它赢得了 InfoWorld 1983 年最佳新硬件奖。最终销量超过 600 万台。

By the late 1980s, portable PCs were becoming more practical. Early portables from Osborne and Compaq were full-sized computers with handles and tiny built-in monitors. They could be dragged from offices to homes or worksites. Programmable calculators were genuinely portable and could be used with batteries but had tiny screens and keyboards. The most portable computer with a real keyboard was Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Model 100, developed by Kyocera of Japan (figure 8.7). It ran for about 20 hours off standard batteries and weighed only three pounds. Achieving those goals involved some significant compromises—no built-in disk drives, only 8 to 32 KB of memory, and a screen limited to eight lines of text. Its most enthusiastic users were journalists, who had previously dictated copy over telephone lines. They could now write stories in the field with the Model 100, filing them with its built-in modem. As well as a text editor, its ROM chips included programs to maintain to-do lists and address books and Microsoft BASIC, which enabled custom applications such as data logging and industrial control. It won InfoWorld’s award for the best new hardware of 1983. More than six million were eventually sold.

类似技术很快催生了电池供电的 PC 兼容机。东芝于 1985 年推出的 T1100 包含一个内置 3.5 英寸软盘驱动器和一个完全兼容 IBM 的单色显示器。它通常被称为第一台笔记本电脑。（GRiD 几年前率先采用了这种格式（图 8.8），但它的机器不兼容 IBM。）T1100 及其功能逐渐增强的后续产品将重量控制在 9 磅左右。到 1989 年，东芝推出了更高端的选项，包括硬盘驱动器、可更换电池组和 80286 处理器。

Similar technologies soon led to battery powered PC compatibles. Toshiba’s T1100, introduced in 1985, included a built-in 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and a full IBM-compatible monochrome display. It is often called the first laptop PC. (GRiD pioneered the format a few years earlier (figure 8.8), but its machines were not IBM compatible.) The T1100 and its gradually more capable successors kept their weight down to about nine pounds. By 1989, Toshiba had introduced higher-end options with hard disk drives, swappable battery packs, and 80286 processors.

可以生产出更小更轻的 PC，但必须做出很大的妥协。1989 年，Atari 推出了售价 400 美元的 Portfolio，这是一款重量为一磅的机器，功能与最初的 IBM PC 相似。它包括一个低功耗的 Intel 兼容处理器、一个 Lotus 1-2-3 兼容电子表格和一个 MS-DOS 兼容操作系统可使用可移动存储卡。Portfolio 被誉为“雅皮士装备的极致”，是小型化的典范，但其屏幕小巧、难以阅读、存储空间有限、键盘小巧，影响了其作为商务工具的实用性^。78

It was possible to produce a smaller and lighter PC, but only by making deep compromises. In 1989, Atari unveiled its $400 Portfolio—a one-pound machine with capabilities similar to the original IBM PC. It included a low-power Intel-compatible processor, a Lotus 1-2-3–compatible spreadsheet, and an MS-DOS–compatible operating system working with removable memory cards. Hailed as “the ultimate in yuppie accoutrements,” the Portfolio was a feat of miniaturization, but its tiny, hard-to-read screen, limited storage, and fiddly little keyboard hurt its practicality as a business tool.⁷⁸

PC 胜利

The PC Triumphant

20 世纪 80 年代末，个人电脑的地位无可撼动。IBM 个人电脑已从单一型号发展成为一种新型计算的基础。要理解其中的原因，我们需要考虑价格和性能的变化。扣除通货膨胀因素后，1981 年，一台配备两张软盘、一个单色屏幕和 176 KB RAM 的个人电脑售价为 5,000 美元。1989 年底，同样的预算可以买到什么呢？

The PC’s position at the end of the 1980s was unassailable. The IBM PC had evolved from a single model to the basis for a new kind of computing. To understand why, we need to consider changes in price as well as performance. Adjusted for inflation, in 1981 a PC with two floppy disks, a monochrome screen, and 176 KB of RAM had cost $5,000. What could the same budget buy in late 1989?

当时还没有与原始 PC 相媲美的产品在售。WarehouseData Products 公司正在清仓性能翻倍的 PC/XT 克隆产品。5,000 美元可以购买五套完整的系统，包括屏幕和硬盘——足够经营一家小企业。在戴尔，它可以买到三套 turbo AT 系统，每套系统的处理器能力几乎是原始 PC 的十倍。它们的图形效果好得多，硬盘让用户摆脱了无休止地更换软盘的体验。花掉整笔钱买一台机器可以买到一件了不起的东西。在黄金地段1989 年 12 月的《Byte》杂志封面内侧，戴尔正在宣传其旗舰产品戴尔系统 325（图 8.9 ）：运行^速度 为 25 MHz 的 386 处理器，配备 100 MB 硬盘驱动器和 SuperVGA 彩色屏幕。根据一项广泛使用的基准测试，该配置的性能是原装 IBM PC 的 25 倍以上。79 PC Magazine评价它为“价格有竞争力、保修期长的全套产品”，称其为“编辑之选”，价格仅为同等 Compaq 型号的一半，尽管戴尔使用廉价的商品外壳导致了一些（字面意义上的）粗糙边缘^。80

Nothing comparable to the original PC was still being sold. WarehouseData Products was liquidating PC/XT clones with twice the performance. $5,000 would buy five complete systems, including screens and hard drives—enough to run a small business. At Dell it would secure three turbo AT systems, each with close to ten times the processor power of the original PC. They had much better graphics, and their hard drives liberated users from the experience of endlessly swapping floppy disks. Blowing the whole sum on one machine would buy something spectacular. In the prime spot in the December 1989 Byte, just inside the front cover, Dell was advertising its flagship Dell System 325 (figure 8.9): a 386 running at 25 MHz with a 100 MB hard disk drive and a SuperVGA color screen. According to one widely used benchmark, that configuration would provide more than 25 times the performance of an original IBM PC.⁷⁹ PC Magazine reviewed it as “a complete package at a competitive price with an outstanding warranty,” declaring it the “Editor’s Choice” at half the price of the equivalent Compaq model despite some (literal) rough edges caused by Dell’s use of a cheap commodity case.⁸⁰

这些在性能和价格方面的显著改进使 PC 成为美国办公室的标准配置。然而，即使花 1,000 美元购买一套廉价的 PC 系统，再加上几百美元购买打印机和软件及支持，对于在家中进行文字处理和电子表格工作来说，花费也太多了。1990 年，只有 15% 的美国家庭拥有电脑。在非裔美国家庭中，这一数字为 7%。即使在最富裕的 20% 的家庭中，也有三分之二的家庭尚未购买电脑^。81

These remarkable improvements in power and affordability made the PC a standard part of the American office. Yet even $1,000 for a bargain-basement PC system, plus a few hundred for a printer and more for software and support, was a lot to spend for the ability to do word processing and spreadsheet work at home. Only 15 percent of American households owned a computer in 1990. Among African American households, the figure was 7 percent. Even among the richest 20 percent of households, two thirds had not yet made the purchase.⁸¹

到 20 世纪 80 年代末，DOS 已经获得了一些新功能，例如更好的 BASIC 和全屏文本编辑器，以及对更大内存的有限支持，但它的局限性阻碍了功能越来越强大的 PC 硬件发挥其潜力。戴尔 System 325 拥有能够支持多用户、虚拟内存和强大的多任务处理的处理器。在 DOS 下，它无法实现上述任何功能，而是作为 IBM 原始 PC 的更快版本运行，而 IBM 原始 PC 本身是 20 世纪 70 年代微型计算技术的演变。微软的官方答案是使用 OS/2 而不是 DOS，但几乎没有人这样做。在第 10 章中，我们将介绍 20 世纪 90 年代 PC 的进一步发展以及最终取代 DOS 的操作系统——不是 OS/2，而是 Microsoft Windows。然而，在讲述这个故事之前，我们再次回顾一下计算研究人员、小型计算机生产商和 Unix 工作站公司在个人计算机发展过程中所做的事情。您会发现，我们现代个人计算机所采用的处理器和操作系统与这些发展有着很大的关联，就像它们与原始 IBM PC 有着很大的关联一样。

By the end of the 1980s, DOS had picked up some new features, like a better BASIC and a full screen text editor, and limited support for larger memories, but its limitations held back the ever more powerful PC hardware from living up to its potential. The Dell System 325 had a processor able to support multiple users, virtual memory, and robust multitasking. Under DOS it could do none of those things, instead functioning as a faster version of IBM’s original PC, which was itself an evolution of 1970s microcomputing technology. Microsoft’s official answer was to use OS/2 instead of DOS, but almost nobody did. In chapter 10, we look at the further development of the PC over the 1990s and the eventual replacement of DOS—not by OS/2 but by Microsoft Windows. Before we tell that story, however, we set back the clock again to see what computing researchers, minicomputer producers, and Unix workstation companies had been up to while personal computers were evolving. You will see that the processors and operating systems that power our modern personal computers have as much to do with those developments as they do with the original IBM PC.

施乐帕克研究中心

Xerox PARC

有两件事让 PARC 的成立对计算机行业具有重大意义。第一是选择帕洛阿尔托：施乐公司企业研究总监雅各布·戈德曼 (Jacob Goldman) 原本倾向于康涅狄格州纽黑文，但他聘请来建立实验室的乔治·帕克 (George Pake) 却偏爱帕洛阿尔托，并最终赢得了胜利，尽管那里距离施乐位于东北部的总部很远。

Two things made PARC’s founding significant for computing. The first was the choice of Palo Alto: Jacob Goldman, director of corporate research at Xerox, had favored New Haven, Connecticut, but the person he hired to set up the lab, George Pake, favored Palo Alto and prevailed, even though it was far from Xerox’s headquarters in the Northeast.

第二场发生在国会大厅。随着抗议活动在大学校园内不断升温，国会中也爆发了一场关于美国参与越南战争的辩论，包括国防部资助的与战争有关的大学研究。参议员 J. William Fulbright 警告说，面对庞大的“军工联合体”，科学研究正在失去独立性。在 1970 年《军事采购授权法案》的修正案中，由参议员 Mike Mansfield 主持的一个委员会插入了这样一段文字：“任何授权资金……不得用于开展任何研究项目或研究，除非此类研究与特定军事职能或行动有直接和明显的关系。” ³该委员会旨在将基础研究与应用研究分开，但那些使用 ARPA 资金进行高级计算研究的人认为他们处于危险之中。4^一些成员认为国家科学基金会将取代国防部资助基础研究，但 NSF 从未获得资源来弥补不足。

The second took place in the halls of Congress. As protests mounted on college campuses, a parallel debate raged in Congress over the US involvement in Vietnam, including war-related university research funded by the Department of Defense (DoD). Senator J. William Fulbright warned that science research was losing its independence in the face of a monolithic “military-industrial complex.” In an amendment to the 1970 Military Procurement Authorization Bill, a committee chaired by Senator Mike Mansfield inserted language that “none of the funds authorized … may be used to carry out any research project or study unless such a study has a direct and apparent relationship to a specific military function or operation.”³ The committee intended to separate basic from applied research, but those doing advanced research on computing with ARPA funding felt that they were at risk.⁴ Some members assumed that the National Science Foundation would take the DoD’s place in funding basic research, but the NSF was never given the resources to take up the slack.

当时，乔治·帕克正在全国各所大学寻找人员来为施乐 PARC 工作。他发现有一批才华横溢、雄心勃勃的人愿意搬到帕洛阿尔托。ARPA 的资金主要集中在几所大学，包括麻省理工学院、卡内基梅隆大学、斯坦福大学、加州大学伯克利分校和犹他大学。这些大学的研究人员最终都来到了 PARC，包括犹他大学的艾伦·凯和罗伯特·泰勒，以及麻省理工学院的杰罗姆·艾尔金德和罗伯特·梅特卡夫。（梅特卡夫实际上是在哈佛大学攻读博士学位，但在被 PARC 招募时，他在麻省理工学院有一份由 ARPA 资助的工作。）泰勒曾担任 ARPA 信息处理技术办公室主任。查克·塔克和巴特勒·兰普森是搬到 PARC 的附近伯克利计算机公司的校友之一。PARC 鼓励员工使用 SDS 技术，因为 SDS 刚刚被施乐收购。但那里的研究人员拒绝了，而是构建了 PDP-10 的克隆版，他们将其称为多路访问施乐计算机，简称 MAXC，这是对 SDS 创始人马克斯·帕列夫斯基 (Max Palevsky) 名字的双关语^。5

At that moment, George Pake was scouring the country’s universities for people to staff Xerox PARC. He found a crop of talented and ambitious people willing to move to Palo Alto. ARPA funding was heavily concentrated at a few universities, including MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and the University of Utah. Researchers from each of those ended up at PARC, including Alan Kay and Robert Taylor from Utah, and Jerome Elkind and Robert Metcalfe from MIT. (Metcalfe actually was getting his PhD from Harvard, but at the time he was recruited by PARC he had an ARPA-funded job at MIT.) Taylor had been head of ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office. Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson were among the alumni of the nearby Berkeley Computer Corporation who moved to PARC. PARC staff was encouraged to use SDS technology because SDS had just been purchased by Xerox. But the researchers there resisted and instead built a clone of the PDP-10, which they called the multiple access Xerox computer—MAXC for short, a pun on the name of Max Palevsky, the founder of SDS.⁵

PARC 团队决心开发一种新型的交互式计算体验，而不是完美的分时。从 1972 年起，实验室的工作重心就放在新型计算机 Alto 的硬件和软件开发上。Butler Lampson 提议建造它，Charles P. Thacker 担任首席硬件设计师。Thacker 后来凭借这项工作获得了图灵奖。功能强大到足以支持图形用户界面的个人计算机架构大部分来自 DEC VAX 等小型计算机。但即使配备了专门的图形硬件，VAX 机器也从未打算用于个人用途。施乐 PARC 团队一开始设计和建造的本质上是一台个人小型计算机。每台 Alto 都将高分辨率图形硬件直接与强大的处理器和按照当时标准大得离谱的内存结合在一起。

Rather than perfect timesharing, the PARC team was determined to develop a new kind of interactive computing experience. Development of the hardware and software for a new computer, the Alto, was at the center of the lab’s work from 1972 onward. Butler Lampson proposed its construction, with Charles P. Thacker as lead hardware designer. Thacker later won the Turing award for this work. Much of the architecture of personal computers powerful enough to support graphical user interfaces came from minicomputers such as the DEC VAX. But even when equipped with specialized graphics hardware, VAX machines were never intended for personal use. The Xerox PARC team had started by designing and building what was essentially a personal minicomputer. Each Alto coupled high-resolution graphics hardware directly to a powerful processor with, by the standards of the day, an absurdly large memory.

Alto 与 20 世纪 80 年代中期最先进的个人电脑有很多共同之处，但在 20 世纪 70 年代初期实现这些功能需要不同的技术。Alto 使用集成电路，但与小型计算机一样，它们的处理器功能过于强大，无法挤进单个芯片。事实上，Alto 拥有一种新颖的架构，处理器功能分散在机器各处，而不是集中在一块电路板上。每台 Alto 都有自己的硬盘，带有可拆卸的盘片，就像 IBM 大型机使用的硬盘一样。

The Alto had a lot in common with the most advanced personal computers of the mid-1980s, but realizing those capabilities in the early 1970s required different technology. Altos used integrated circuits but, like minicomputers, their processors were too powerful to squeeze onto a single chip. In fact, the Alto had a novel architecture in which processor capabilities were spread around the machine rather than clustered on one circuit board. Each Alto had its own hard drive with a removable platter, like those used with IBM mainframes.

每台 Alto 都配备了鼠标。Doug Engelbart 没有加入 Xerox PARC，但他的许多员工都加入了，包括 Bill English（他负责了 Alto 的详细设计）。原始鼠标）。PARC 的研究人员改进了鼠标，并将其与独特的高分辨率屏幕相结合，纵向排列以模仿一张纸。这是位图，因此可以通过翻转内存中的位来操纵其近 50 万像素。这要归功于新推出的 RAM 芯片，因此至少 128 KB 的内存可以塞进 Alto。6 考虑到^办公室工作，Bob Metcalf 发明了上一章中讨论的以太网系统，以支持实验室的 Altos 并让它们共享文件和打印机。

Each Alto was equipped with a mouse. Doug Engelbart did not join Xerox PARC, but many of his staff did, including Bill English (who did the detailed design of the original mouse). Researchers at PARC refined the mouse and coupled it with a unique high-resolution screen, arranged in portrait orientation to mimic a sheet of paper. This was bitmapped, so that its almost half-million pixels could be manipulated by flipping bits in memory. That was possible by the new availability of RAM chips, so that at least 128 KB of memory could be stuffed into an Alto.⁶ With office work in mind, Bob Metcalf’s ethernet system, discussed in the previous chapter, was invented to support the lab’s Altos and let them share files and printers.

第一台 Alto 于 1973 年投入使用，不久之后，施乐就制造了足够多的 Alto 来满足 PARC 的内部计算需求。20 世纪 70 年代末，改进后的型号得到了更广泛的应用，包括吉米·卡特执政期间在白宫的一个试点项目。由于所有这些新奇的硬件，制造一台 Alto 的成本约为 18,000 美元，远远高于几年后出现的个人电脑。20 世纪 80 年代，当成本下降到足以使该系统可行时，PARC 利用施乐的财富探索计算的潜在形态。

The first Alto went into use in 1973, and before long, Xerox had built enough to serve PARC’s internal computing needs. An improved model was used more widely in the late 1970s, including a pilot project in the White House during Jimmy Carter’s administration. Thanks to all this novel hardware, an Alto cost about $18,000 to build, far more than the personal computers that would begin to appear a few years later. PARC was using Xerox’s riches to explore the potential shape of computing in the 1980s after costs had dropped enough to make the system viable.

Smalltalk 和面向对象编程

Smalltalk and Object-Oriented Programming

Smalltalk 编程环境是由一个小组开发的，其负责人是极具魅力的年轻研究员 Alan Kay。Adele Goldberg 在其设计中发挥了重要作用。Kay 认为新兴的 Alto 是一个机会，可以创造某种东西的“临时”版本，这种东西他在 1968 年的博士论文中首次描述过，后来开始称之为 Dynabook。这有点像今天的平板电脑：一种轻薄、便携、由电池供电的设备，配有高分辨率屏幕和键盘（与大多数平板电脑不同）。书名反映了^这样一种理念：这种设备将是坚固、便携的，并且是教育的核心。7 Kay 深受 Seymour Papert 教学理论的影响，他强调孩子们需要通过实验来学习。与普通书籍不同，它将是动态的，对 Kay 来说，这意味着它必须具有高度的互动性，但又要简单有趣，不像 Doug Englebart 的 NLS 等现有系统。

The Smalltalk programming environment was developed by a small group led by Alan Kay, a charismatic young researcher. Adele Goldberg played a large part in its design. Kay saw the emerging Alto as a chance to create an “interim” version of something he first described in his 1968 PhD dissertation and later began to call a Dynabook. This was something like today’s tablet computers: a thin, portable, battery-powered device with a high-resolution screen and (unlike most tablet computers) a keyboard. The book name reflected the idea that the device would be robust, portable, and central to education.⁷ Kay was heavily influenced by the pedagogical theories of Seymour Papert, who stressed the need for children to learn through experimentation. Unlike an ordinary book, it would be dynamic, which to Kay meant it had to be highly interactive but easy and fun, unlike existing systems such as Doug Englebart’s NLS.

Smalltalk 的设计充分考虑了灵活性和交互性，可以将不同类型的图形对象显示在屏幕上并与它们交互。传统编程语言假定用户界面基于文本。用它们编写的应用程序通过键入命令或从文本菜单中选择来控制。程序将打印一个选项列表，并等待用户按下按键来选择。Kay 希望 Dynabook 具有个性化和交互性，显示图片供用户交互。没有人知道哪种图形界面最有效——下拉菜单和图标等想法尚未形成。在犹他大学攻读博士学位期间，Kay 与 Ivan Sutherland 合作，后者的 Sketchpad 系统对其产生了重大影响，因为它既使用了图形，又支持剪辑和滚动窗口，这样用户就可以处理太大而无法在屏幕上完全显示的对象。

Smalltalk was designed with flexibility and interactivity in mind, to put graphical objects of different kinds on screen and interact with them. Traditional programming languages assumed a text-based user interface. Applications coded with them were controlled with typed commands or selections from text menus. The program would print a list of options and wait for users to push a key to select one. Kay wanted the Dynabook to feel personal and interactive, displaying pictures for its users to interact with. Nobody yet knew what kind of graphical interface would prove most effective—ideas such as pull-down menus and icons had not yet been codified. During his PhD research, at the University of Utah, Kay worked with Ivan Sutherland, whose Sketchpad system was a major influence, through both its use of graphics and its support for clipping and scrolling windows so that users could work with objects too large to fully display on the screen.

除一种新型用户界面外，Smalltalk 还编纂并开始传播一种名为面向对象编程的新编程语言。Kay 从 Simula 67 中汲取了一些灵感，Simula 67 是由挪威的 Ole-Johan Dahl 和 Kristen Nygaard 开发的一种计算机建模和模拟语言。8^传统语言将数据结构与操作它们的代码分开定义。新方法让程序员可以编写高度模块化的代码，其中数据结构与程序员用来访问其值或更新其内容的操作一起定义。Kay 将这些数据和代码的混合体称为对象。每个对象都是一个标准类的实例。新类可以定义为现有类的特例，具有附加功能或特性。

As well as a new kind of user interface, Smalltalk codified and began to spread a new approach to programming languages called object-oriented programming. Kay took some ideas from Simula 67, a computer modeling and simulation language developed in Norway by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard.⁸ Traditional languages define data structures separately from the code that manipulates them. The new approach let programmers produce highly modularized code, in which data structures are defined together with the operations that programmers use to access their values or update their contents. These hybrid bundles of data and code were called objects by Kay. Each object was an instance of a standard class. New classes could be defined as special cases of existing ones, with additional capabilities or characteristics.

这些功能对于计算机模拟具有巨大的价值，在计算机模拟中，程序员需要定义真实世界对象的表示以及定义它们交互所需的规则。它们对当时许多致力于新编程语言或开发方法特性的人来说也很有吸引力，因为这些特性使个人或小团队更容易创建复杂、可靠的软件。我们已经讨论了所谓的软件危机以及应对它的努力，例如结构化编程。面向对象是计算机科学家（如 Niklaus Wirth 和 Tony Hoare）提出的变量范围和代码模块化思想的延伸。由于所有数据都保存在对象内部，因此只能使用定义相应类的代码中明确提供的方法对其进行操作。这加强了模块化，使系统之间重用代码和维护系统变得更加容易。Smalltalk 将这些对象之间的交互概念化为一种通过交换消息实现的对话，Kay 给该语言起的名字就体现了这一思想。

These capabilities had huge value for computer simulations, in which programmers needed to define representations of real-world objects together with the rules needed to define their interactions. They were also attractive for many of the people working around this time on new programming languages or development methodology features to make it easier for individuals or small teams to create complex, reliable software. We have already discussed the so-called software crisis and efforts to deal with it such as structured programming. Object orientation was an extension of ideas about variable scope and code modularity proposed by computer scientists such as Niklaus Wirth and Tony Hoare. Because all data was held inside objects, it could be manipulated only by using the methods explicitly provided in the code defining the corresponding classes. That enforced modularity and made it easier to reuse code between systems and to maintain systems. Smalltalk conceptualized the interactions between these objects as a kind of dialog achieved through the exchange of messages, an idea captured in the name Kay gave the language.

这些新的语言特性对于图形用户界面至少和模拟语言一样有前景（见图9.1）。图形用户界面比基于文本的菜单复杂得多，迫使程序员管理一个点阵屏幕，上面布满了要点击的按钮、要滚动的面板和要选择的菜单选项。用 Kay 推广的一个术语来说，传统的界面方法是模态的。用户发出所需的命令，系统进入一种模式。系统对下一个输入的响应取决于模式。例如，在删除模式下，选择一个文件会删除它。在编辑模式下，同样的操作会打开它进行编辑。Kay 倾向于一种不同的界面风格，在这种风格中，用户首先选择他们想要处理的对象，然后操纵它来完成所需的操作。在传统的编程语言中提供这种开放式交互会令人沮丧和低效——程序必须被构造成一个循环，不断检查用户是否刚刚执行了大量可能的操作。在 Smalltalk 中，程序员可以指定要执行的代码当屏幕、按钮或滚动条的特定区域被触发时运行，然后系统本身会确定哪些对象应该被提醒以响应特定的点击。这被称为事件驱动代码。

These new language features were at least as promising for graphical user interfaces as for simulation languages (see figure 9.1). Graphical user interfaces were much more complex than text-based menus, forcing programmers to manage a bitmapped screen festooned with buttons to click, panels to scroll, and menu options to select. Traditional interface methods were, to use a term popularized by Kay, modal. Users issued the desired command, which put the system into a mode. What it did in response to their next input would depend on the mode. For example, in delete mode, selecting a file would delete it. In edit mode, the same action would open it for editing. Kay favored a different interface style, in which users would first select the object they wanted to work on and then manipulate it to accomplish the desired operation. Providing that kind of open-ended interaction in a conventional programming language would be frustrating and inefficient—the program would have to be structured as a loop that constantly checked whether the user had just carried out each of a huge number of possible actions. In Smalltalk, the programmer could specify the code to be run when a particular region of the screen, button, or scroll bar was triggered, and then the system itself would figure out what objects should be alerted in response to a particular click. This was called event-driven code.

Kay 列举了很多影响 Smalltalk 的系统。其中最重要的一个就是 Lisp 编程语言。Kay 后来表示，他“简直不敢相信Lisp 的理念如此美妙和奇妙” ^。9计算机科学家往往喜欢简约而灵活的语言，几乎总是讨厌那些设计委员会为了满足各种不同类型用户的想象需求而塞满各种功能的语言（如 PL/I、COBOL 和防御导向的 Ada）。与 Lisp 一样，Smalltalk 有一个非常简单的核心，但允许用户用自己的代码扩展它，将对象层层叠加。Smalltalk 的大部分功能本身都是用 Smalltalk 实现的，因此即使在程序运行时也可以用代码操纵系统的每个方面。这是因为它的结构：实现早期版本的 Dan Ingalls 设计了一个虚拟机来支持 Smalltalk，以便能够有效地解释代码。

Kay has mentioned a long list of systems that influenced Smalltalk. One of the most important was the Lisp programming language. Kay said later that he “could hardly believe how beautiful and wonderful the idea of Lisp was.”⁹ Computer scientists tend to love languages that are minimalist and flexible, and almost invariably hate those (like PL/I, COBOL, and the defense-oriented Ada) that design committees have stuffed with features to meet the imagined needs of many different kinds of user. Smalltalk, like Lisp, had a very simple core but allowed users to extend this with their own code, layering objects on top of each other. Most of Smalltalk was itself implemented in Smalltalk, with the result that every aspect of the system could be manipulated with code even while a program was running. This was made possible by its structure: Dan Ingalls, who implemented the early versions, designed a virtual machine to underpin Smalltalk so that code could be efficiently interpreted.

Smalltalk 超越了 Lisp，提供了后来被称为集成开发环境 (IDE) 的东西，其中包括文本编辑器、用于探索代码中定义的类的层次结构的浏览器，以及用于在程序执行时检查对象当前状态的调试工具。IDE 概念最终成为其他语言软件开发的标准部分。两家公司 Symbolics 和 Lisp Machines 将其应用于 Lisp 本身，这两家公司均由麻省理工学院人工智能实验室的敌对“黑客”派系于 1979 年创立。每家公司都销售少量价格昂贵的单用户计算机，每台售价约 70,000 美元。它们拥有针对 Lisp 优化的面向堆栈的处理器架构。随着通用 PC 的功能越来越强大，这种计算机本来就很小的市场逐渐萎缩，但现有用户仍坚持使用它们，因为它们的开发环境为程序员提供了巨大的生产力优势。

Smalltalk went beyond Lisp by providing what was later called an integrated development environment (IDE), which included a text editor, a browser to explore the hierarchies of classes defined in code, and debugging tools to examine the current state of objects as programs executed. The IDE concept eventually became a standard part of software development for other languages. It was applied to Lisp itself by two firms, Symbolics and Lisp Machines, both founded in 1979 by rival factions of “hackers” from the MIT AI lab. Each sold small numbers of enormously expensive single-user computers, costing around $70,000 each. They had stack-oriented processor architectures optimized for Lisp. As general-purpose PCs grew more powerful, the already small market for such computers dwindled to nothing, but existing users stuck with them because of the huge productivity advantages their development environments provided to programmers.

面向对象编程比 Alto 的其他一些新功能（如鼠标和图形控件）更难掌握，而且传播速度也更慢。20 世纪 70 年代后期的一些高调语言，如 Niklaus Wirth 继 Pascal 之后推出的 Modula-2，旨在支持更高的模块化，但完整的面向对象方法在 PARC 之外鲜为人知，直到 1981 年 8 月的《Byte》杂志上刊登了一篇关于它的文章^。10 Smalltalk本身也找到了一些热情的用户，例如在华尔街公司，高昂的入门成本可以通过它为熟练的应用程序开发人员提供的速度提升来证明是合理的。

Object-oriented programming was harder to grasp than some of the other novel features of Alto, such as mice and graphical controls, and spread more slowly. Some high-profile languages of the late 1970s, such as Niklaus Wirth’s follow-up to Pascal, Modula-2, were designed to support increased modularity, but the full object-oriented approach was little known outside PARC until an article about it appeared in the August 1981 issue of Byte magazine.¹⁰ Smalltalk itself found some enthusiastic users, for example, at Wall Street firms where the high cost of entry could be justified by the speed boost it provided to skilled application developers.

直到 20 世纪 90 年代，面向对象编程才成为主流，当时已有的编程语言中加入了面向对象特性，最引人注目的是贝尔实验室计算机科学家 Bjarne Stroustrup 在其 1985 年出版的《C++ 编程语言》^一书中对 C 语言的扩展。11 C ++是 C 语言的超集，这意味着现有的 C 代码可以继续使用，程序员可以选择接受或忽略新的面向对象功能。这让 Kay（“对象是一个激进的想法，后来就倒退了”）和其他纯粹主义者感到震惊，但它帮助 C ++迅速成为一种广泛使用的语言，并成为计算机科学教学的宠儿^。12

Object-oriented programming did not go mainstream until the 1990s with the addition of object-oriented features to established programming languages, most notably in the extensions to C described by Bell Labs computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup in his 1985 book The C++ Programming Language.¹¹ C++ was a superset of C, meaning that existing C code continued to work and programmers could embrace or ignore the new object-oriented capabilities as they chose. This appalled Kay (“objects were a radical idea, then they got retrograded”) and other purists, but it helped C++ quickly establish itself as a widely used language and a favorite for computer science instruction.¹²

你所看到的就是你得到的

What You See Is What You Get

Smalltalk 不是操作系统。它的开发环境有一个定义好的界面，主要依赖于鼠标点击时弹出的菜单，但 Smalltalk 是一个工具包，允许快速设计具有图形用户界面的应用程序原型，而不是标准化这些界面的手段。作为 Alto 上运行的第一款主要图形软件，它对为该机器开发的其他程序产生了重大影响。

Smalltalk was not an operating system. It had a defined interface for its development environment, which relied heavily on menus that popped up (appeared) when mouse buttons were clicked, but Smalltalk worked as a toolkit to allow the rapid prototyping of applications with graphical user interfaces rather than as a means of standardizing those interfaces. As the first major piece of graphical software running on the Alto, it was heavily influential on other programs developed for that machine.

其中之一就是 1976 年 Larry Tesler 和 Timothy Mott 制作的 Gypsy 文本编辑器。Gypsy 采用了之前由 Butler Lampson 和 Charles Simonyi 等人开发的程序 Bravo 的功能，并使用第一个用户界面对其进行了重新设计，使其类似于现在的标准系统（例如 Microsoft Word）。例如，要添加文本，用户只需使用鼠标设置插入点，然后键入即可。要复制文本，只需用鼠标突出显示文本，然后按下复制键。施乐的研究人员效仿 Kay，将这种操作方式称为非模式操作，因为触发功能的结果是一致的，并且不依赖于先前选择的命令模式^。13

One of these was the Gypsy text editor produced by Larry Tesler and Timothy Mott in 1976. Gypsy took the capabilities of a previous program, Bravo, developed by a group including Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi, and reworked it with the first user interface to resemble that of now-standard systems such as Microsoft Word. For example, to add text, users simply used the mouse to set an insertion point and then typed. To copy text, one highlighted it with the mouse and then pushed the Copy key. Xerox researchers, following Kay, called this style of operation modeless because the results of triggering a function were consistent and did not depend on a previously selected command mode.¹³

和 Bravo 一样，Gypsy 利用 Alto 的图形屏幕显示不同字体的文本，精确的字母间距，嵌入的图形以及粗体和斜体文本等格式化功能。计算机出版专家 Jonathan Seybold 将此称为所见即所得(WYSIWYG)，重新利用了 Flip Wilson 的口头禅，他是第一位定期出现在电视上的非裔美国喜剧演员。Wilson 在扮​​演 Geraldine Jones（一个傲慢自信的女人）时使用了这句口头禅，暗示了他跨性别表演与 Geraldine 的坦率之间的矛盾。PARC 工作人员借用它定义了一种更简单的表现保真度形式：打印输出将尽可能接近屏幕的视觉内容。

Like Bravo, Gypsy exploited the graphical screen of the Alto to display text with different fonts, accurate spacing of letters, embedded graphics, and formatting features such as bold and italic text. Computerized publishing expert Jonathan Seybold dubbed this what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG), repurposing a catchphrase of Flip Wilson, the first African American comedian to make regular television appearances. Wilson used the phrase in character as Geraldine Jones, a brashly self-confident woman, as winking acknowledgement of the tension between his cross-gender performance and Geraldine’s lack of pretense. The PARC staff borrowed it to define a simpler form of representational fidelity: the printed output would match the visual content of the screen as closely as possible.

这是由 PARC 的另一项发明——激光打印机实现的。它将高端施乐复印机的打印和纸张处理机制与强大的嵌入式计算机相结合，能够用激光将高分辨率图像绘制到复印机鼓上，取代了通常用于从源文档创建印记的光学机制。这个想法来自施乐工程师 Gary Starkweather，他于 1971 年调至 PARC。计算机控制系统由包括 Butler Lampson 在内的团队构建，并依靠 PARC 独特的以太网基础设施将大量数据从 Altos 快速传输到打印机控制器。到 20 世纪 70 年代末，IBM 和佳能通过授权施乐技术推出了激光打印机。通过授权专利和销售自己的激光打印机，施乐收回了对 PARC 的全部投资数倍^。14

This was made possible by another PARC invention, the laser printer. This merged the printing and paper handling mechanisms from a high-end Xerox copier with a powerful embedded computer able to draw high resolution images onto the copier drum with a laser, replacing the usual optical mechanism used to create an impression from the source document. The idea came from a Xerox engineer, Gary Starkweather, who in 1971 transferred to PARC. The computer control system was built by a team including Butler Lampson and relied on PARC’s unique Ethernet infrastructure to quickly move large amounts of data from the Altos to the printer controller. By the late 1970s, IBM and Canon had introduced laser printers by licensing Xerox technology. Between income from licensing its patents and selling its own laser printers, Xerox recovered its entire investment in PARC many times over.¹⁴

客户端-服务器应用程序

Client-Server Applications

上一章讨论过的施乐公司发明的以太网提供了一种在本地环境中将计算机相互连接的有效方法。PARC 对这项技术的使用是对格罗施定律中的观点的有力反驳，即一台大型昂贵的计算机比多台小型计算机更具成本效益。15^到20 世纪 70 年代末，出现了一个新的流行词“分布式计算”，用来描述大型和小型计算机通过计算机网络协同工作的想法——例如，使用小型计算机或个人计算机检查数据并更新应用程序和大型机或其他大型计算机的用户界面以维护安全的共享数据库。

Xerox’s invention of Ethernet, discussed in the previous chapter, provided an effective way of linking computers to one another in a local environment. PARC’s use of the technology was a compelling counter argument to the idea, captured in Grosch’s law, that a single large and expensive computer would be more cost effective than multiple smaller computers.¹⁵ By the late 1970s, a new buzzword, distributed computing, had emerged to describe the idea of having big and little computers work together over computer networks—for example, using a minicomputer or personal computer to check data and update the user interface of an application and a mainframe or other large computer to maintain a secure, shared database.

新方法还需要大量软件创新。PARC 的一个例子是将 MAXC（自制的 PDP-10）改造成 Altos 的服务器。MAXC 连接到 ARPANET，PARC 用户的来信通过那里传送。到 1978 年，一款名为 Laurel 的程序已为 Altos 开发出来。这引入了后来成为电子邮件处理标准的方式：用户将邮件下载到个人电脑上进行归档和阅读。回复被上传回服务器。Laurel 使用在 Alto 上运行的图形界面，将屏幕分成两个窗格：一个显示当前邮件文件夹的标题信息，以便用户可以用鼠标选择邮件，另一个显示所选邮件的文本。

The new approach would also require a great deal of innovation in software. One example of this at PARC was the repurposing of MAXC, the homebrew PDP-10, into a server for the Altos. MAXC was hooked up to the ARPANET, and incoming email for users at PARC was delivered there. By 1978, a program called Laurel had been developed for the Altos. This introduced what later became the standard way of working with email: users downloaded their messages to their personal computers to file and read them. Replies were uploaded back to the server. Laurel used a graphical interface, running on Alto, which split the screen into two window panes: one showing header information for the current message folder, so that the user could pick a message with the mouse, and the other showing the text of the selected message.

这种方法被称为客户端-服务器计算——在一台计算机（客户端）上运行的程序向在另一台计算机（服务器）上运行的程序发出请求，让其执行某项操作，即提供服务。IBM 和其他计算机公司为分布式计算设计了复杂的网络策略，包括我们前面提到的 OSI 七层模型。然而，许多实际系统依赖于一种简单但灵活的机制，让在一台计算机上运行的程序在另一台计算机上启动处理作业：远程过程调用 (RPC)。这个想法最初是由 Bruce Nelson 于 1981 年左右在 PARC 提出的，后来被复制到其他操作系统中，并在几年内成为 Unix 的标准组成部分^。16

Approaches of this kind were called client-server computing—a program running on one computer (the client) made a request for a program running on another computer (the server) to do something, that is, to provide a service. IBM and other computer companies devised complicated networking strategies for distributed computing, including the OSI seven-layer model that we mentioned earlier. Many actual systems, however, relied on a simple but flexible mechanism to let a program running on one computer initiate a processing job on another computer: the remote procedure call (RPC). The idea was originated at PARC by Bruce Nelson around 1981 and was copied for other operating systems, becoming a standard part of Unix within a few years.¹⁶

Alto 商业化

Commercializing Alto

那些对 PARC 故事不太熟悉的人经常声称，施乐的最大错误是没有尝试将其创新商业化。事实上，正如迈克尔·A·希尔兹克 (Michael A. Hiltzik) 在其详尽的历史著作《闪电经销商》中所展示的那样，施乐曾认真尝试将 Alto 技术直接推向市场，作为文字处理器和个人电脑的竞争对手。17^如果说有什么错误的话，那就是在客户尚未准备好接受这些创新或硬件尚未出现以合理的价格提供可接受的性能之前，就将 PARC 的创新过快地直接转化为商业产品。

People only vaguely familiar with the PARC story often claim that Xerox’s big mistake was not trying to commercialize its innovations. In fact, as Michael A. Hiltzik showed in his detailed history, Dealers of Lightning, Xerox made a serious attempt to bring Alto technology directly to market as a competitor to word processors and personal computers.¹⁷ If anything, its mistake was to turn PARC’s innovations too directly and too rapidly into commercial products, years before customers were ready for them or hardware existed to provide acceptable performance at a reasonable price.

PARC 员工向施乐的高层管理人员宣传他们的成就，称这是施乐主宰未来办公室的基础。在接下来的五年里，施乐努力将 PARC 的原型变成可销售的产品。这需要的时间、人力（一个发展到 280 名开发人员的团队）和资金远远超过他们最初的发明。1981 年，施乐推出了 Star 计算机（正式名称为 8010 信息系统），这是 Alto 的直接商业改进版（图 9.2）。一台工作站的价格为 16,000 美元，还不包括使用它所需的服务器、激光打印机和以太网。Star 在各个方面都比 Alto 更胜一筹。它的显示器分辨率更高，以太网速度更快，其基于 Butler Lampson 提出的架构的新处理器系列针对虚拟内存和虚拟机进行了优化。它配备了功能强大且精致的办公软件，支持复合文档（例如，在报告中嵌入可编辑的电子表格图表）。

PARC staff pitched their achievements to Xerox’s top management as the foundation on which the firm could dominate the office of the future. Over the next five years, Xerox worked hard to turn PARC’s prototypes into salable products. That required far more time, people (a team that grew to 280 developers), and money than their original invention. Xerox launched its Star computer (officially the 8010 Information System), a direct commercial refinement of the Alto, in 1981 (figure 9.2). A workstation cost $16,000, not including the servers, laser printer, and Ethernet networks needed to use it. Star was superior in every way to Alto. Its display was higher resolution, its Ethernet was faster, and its new family of processors, based on an architecture proposed by Butler Lampson, was optimized for virtual memory and virtual machines. It came with powerful and polished office software, supporting compound documents (for example, embedding an editable spreadsheet chart inside a report).

与 Alto 不同，Star 的操作系统具有标准化的图形用户界面。这引入了计算机桌面的概念。18^正如其设计师 David Canfield Smith 所描述的那样，“每个用户对 Star 的初始视图都是桌面，它类似于办公桌的顶部，以及周围的家具和设备。它代表一个工作环境，当前项目和可访问资源都驻留在其中。屏幕上显示熟悉的办公对象的图片，例如文档、文件夹、文件抽屉、收件箱和发件箱。这些对象显示为小图片或图标。……鼓励 Star 用户以物理方式思考桌面上的对象。您可以移动图标以根据需要排列桌面。” ¹⁹

Unlike Alto, Star’s operating system had a standardized graphical user interface. This introduced the idea of a computer desktop.¹⁸ As its designer, David Canfield Smith, described this, “Every user’s initial view of Star is the Desktop, which resembles the top of an office desk, together with surrounding furniture and equipment. It represents a working environment, where current projects and accessible resources reside. On the screen are displayed pictures of familiar office objects, such as documents, folders, file drawers, in-baskets, and out-baskets. These objects are displayed as small pictures, or icons.… Star users are encouraged to think of the objects on the Desktop in physical terms. You can move the icons around to arrange your Desktop as you wish.”¹⁹

Star 是一款技术奇迹，但施乐公司却很难将其与企业用于办公工作的经济实惠且灵活的 IBM PC 系统相媲美。PC 无法与 Star 的优雅或图形功能相媲美，但它们在滚动页面或加载文档等基本任务上要便宜得多，速度也快得多。Star 虽然功能强大，但其复杂的操作系统却不堪重负，尤其是最初的 Dandelion 处理器。PC 也更灵活。施乐公司将 Star 推销为办公自动化机器，就像 20 世纪 70 年代的专用文字处理器一样，而不是个人电脑。它从未发布过支持 Star 其他应用程序开发的工具。

Star was a technological marvel, but Xerox struggled to sell it against the affordable and flexible IBM PC systems being adopted by businesses for office work. PCs could not match its elegance or graphical capabilities, but they were much cheaper and faster at basic tasks like scrolling a page or loading a document. Powerful as the Star was, its complex operating system overwhelmed its hardware, particularly on the initial Dandelion processor. PCs were also more flexible. Xerox marketed the Star as an office automation machine, like the dedicated word processors of the 1970s, rather than as a personal computer. It never released tools to support the development of other applications for the Star.

后来的版本价格更低，处理器更快，但施乐仅售出了约 25,000 台 Star 系列。到 20 世纪 80 年代末，它放弃了。正如一本畅销书的书名所描述的那样，施乐“摸索着走向未来”。20^其他公司将窗口、图标、鼠标和下拉菜单（所谓的 WIMP 界面）以及以太网的概念带入大众市场。施乐被证明不如苹果或微软灵活，但出于公平起见，我们也应该将施乐与同行公司进行比较：DEC 的小型计算机和交互式操作系统、霍尼韦尔的 Multics 分时系统以及 Control Data 的 Plato。最终，它们都作为企业失败或倒闭了，但它们共同为计算奠定了新的基础。

Later versions had smaller price tags and faster processors, but Xerox sold only about 25,000 of its Star family. By the end of the 1980s, it had given up. Xerox had, as the title of a popular book described it, “fumbled the future.”²⁰ Other firms brought the concept of windows, icons, a mouse, and pull-down menus (the so-called WIMP interface), and Ethernet to a mass market. Xerox proved less nimble than Apple or Microsoft, but out of fairness one should also compare Xerox with peer companies: DEC with its minicomputers and interactive operating systems, Honeywell with its Multics timesharing system, and Control Data with Plato. Eventually they all slipped or failed as businesses, but collectively they laid new foundations for computing.

图形工作站

Graphics Workstations

实验室和工程中心并不认为工作站是 PC 的昂贵替代品，而是捆绑了图形硬件的 VAX 的廉价替代品。VAX 将科学主机的功能带入公司的工程部门。工作站将这种功能带入个人桌面。

Laboratories and engineering centers viewed workstations not as an expensive alternative to a PC but as a cheaper alternative to a VAX bundled with graphics hardware. The VAX brought the power of a scientific mainframe into the engineering division of a company. Workstations brought that power to the individual desktop.

与 Star 不同，Star 效仿 Alto，使用多个芯片构建定制处理器，大多数工作站都使用新的摩托罗拉微处理器芯片，68000 于 1979 年推出。该处理器的设计者在Byte上发表了一系列文章，文章开头解释说，摩托罗拉选择了一种全新的设计，而不是兼容其较旧的 8 位芯片，而英特尔则选择这种方式，以生产“最快、最灵活的处理器”，“为程序员设计，让他们的工作更轻松”。21 68000 的指令集与其架构^的其他部分一样，与 VAX 小型计算机的共同点多于与早期微处理器的共同点。68000 使用 32 位内存地址，使程序员可以方便地将最多 16 MB 的内存作为单个连续区域进行寻址，而不像当时英特尔的处理器使用的复杂的段系统。其丰富的寄存器可以保存和操作 32 位数字，即使处理器以 16 位块的形式移动数据的速度较慢。它提供了许多寻址模式，并且通过大量使用微代码实现了更大的指令集。它具有支持多任务处理的功能。 68000 系列的后续成员，例如完全 32 位的 68020，提供了虚拟内存支持和更大的地址空间。

Unlike the Star, which followed the Alto in building a custom processor from multiple chips, most workstations used a new Motorola microprocessor chip, the 68000, introduced in 1979. A series of articles in Byte by its designers began with an explanation that Motorola had chosen a clean-sheet design over compatibility with its older 8-bit chips, the path taken by Intel, to produce “the fastest, most flexible processor available,” designed “for programmers, to make their job easier.”²¹ The 68000’s instruction set, like the rest of its architecture, had more in common with a VAX minicomputer than with earlier microprocessors. The 68000 used 32-bit memory addresses, giving programmers the convenience of addressing up to 16 MB of memory as a single continuous area, unlike the convoluted segment system that Intel’s processors of the era used. Its plentiful registers could hold and manipulate 32-bit numbers, even though the processor moved data more slowly in 16-bit chunks. It offered many addressing modes, and a larger instruction set made possible by extensive use of microcode. It had features to support multitasking. Later members of the 68000 family, such as the fully 32-bit 68020, provided virtual memory support and even larger address spaces.

马萨诸塞州切姆斯福德的 Apollo 公司率先推出了基于 68000 的工作站。其创始人 Bill Poduska 之前曾与他人共同创立了 Prime，该公司率先推出了 32 位迷你电脑。1981 年，Apollo 推出了一款带有自己的操作系统和网络系统的工作站。单个工作站的起价为 40,000 美元。它很快就面临着来自 Sun Microsystems 的激烈竞争，后者成立于 1982 年初，旨在将为斯坦福大学网络（因此公司得名）开发的工作站商业化。这延续了当地将技术从公共资助的大学项目转移到盈利性公司的传统。Andy Bechtolsheim 带来了斯坦福硬件。Bill Joy 作为另一位联合创始人带来了在 BSD Unix 工作中开发的专业知识。22^另一家主要工作站供应商 Silicon Graphics Incorporated 强调强大的图形硬件，并在电影制片厂中占据主导地位。

First out of the blocks with a 68000-based workstation was Apollo, of Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Its founder, Bill Poduska, had previously cofounded Prime, the company that pioneered the 32-bit mini. In 1981, Apollo delivered a workstation with its own operating and networking systems. The price for a single workstation began at $40,000. It soon faced tough competition from Sun Microsystems, founded in early 1982, to commercialize a workstation developed for the Stanford University Network (hence the company’s name). This continued the local tradition of shifting technology from publicly funded university projects to profit-making companies. Andy Bechtolsheim brought the Stanford hardware. Bill Joy brought expertise developed on the BSD Unix effort as another cofounder.²² Silicon Graphics Incorporated, the other major workstation supplier, emphasized powerful graphics hardware and won a dominant position in film studios.

工作站公司瞄准的是那些无法承担新技术开发成本的小型市场。相反，它们依靠所谓的开放系统方法 — 使用标准处理器、内存芯片、网络标准、外围连接等。再加上基于微处理器的系统相对于小型计算机固有的性价比优势，这为它们带来了巨大的性价比优势。支持虚拟内存的 Sun-2 于 1984 年问世。实验室或交易大厅现在可以安装十几个工作站，每个工作站都配有强大的处理器，而不必将十几个昂贵的图形终端连接到高端 VAX 小型计算机。价格在 20,000 美元左右，对于Byte宣称的“VAX 级机器”来说，这很划算^。23很快，基于 Unix 的服务器也取代了 DEC 设备，用于其他应用，例如企业电子邮件和数据库。

Workstation companies targeted small markets that would not support the cost of developing new technologies. Instead, they depended on what was called an open systems approach—using standard processors, memory chips, networking standards, peripheral connections, and so on. Combined with the inherent price-performance advantages of microprocessor-based systems over minicomputers, this gave them a huge price-performance advantage. The Sun-2, with virtual memory support, arrived in 1984. Instead of connecting a dozen expensive graphical terminals to a high-end VAX minicomputer, a lab or trading floor could now install a dozen workstations each with a powerful processor of its own. Prices were in the $20,000 range, a bargain for what Byte declared a “VAX-class machine.”²³ Soon Unix-based servers were also replacing DEC equipment for other applications such as corporate email and databases.

Sun 的口号是“网络就是计算机”。它的工作站通常位于网络中，并配有更强大的文件存储服务器。Unix 可以存储用户配置文件集中保存，这样个人配置就可以在网络上的任何计算机上使用。Unix 程序可以在另一台计算机（例如功能强大的服务器）上运行，但结果显示在本地窗口中。到 20 世纪 80 年代末，这些本地网络已桥接到互联网连接或企业骨干网络上，以提供对建筑物以外资源的无缝访问。

Sun’s slogan was “The network is the computer.” Its workstations were usually found in networks, together with a more powerful server for file storage. Unix could store user profiles centrally, so that one’s personal configuration would work on any computer on the network. A Unix program could run on another computer (such as a powerful server) but display its results in a local window. By the late 1980s, these local networks had been bridged onto Internet connections or corporate backbone networks to provide seamless access to resources far beyond the building.

尽管 DEC 拥有强大的研发实力，但其管理风格、对 VAX 产品线的投入以及设计和制造尽可能多的自有组件的决心严重阻碍了其销售工作站的努力。到 20 世纪 80 年代末，VAX 系统的未来市场开始变得岌岌可危。DEC 仍然是计算机行业第二大公司，却难以做出有效应对。1992 年，该公司宣布季度亏损 28 亿美元，并罢免了长期担任首席执行官的肯·奥尔森。DEC 再也没有恢复持续盈利。

Although DEC had strong research and development, its management style, commitment to its VAX product line, and determination to design and build as many of its own components as possible fatally hobbled its own efforts to sell workstations. By the late 1980s, the future market for VAX systems was starting to look shaky. DEC, still the second largest firm in the computer industry, struggled to mount an effective response. In 1992 it announced a quarterly loss of $2.8 billion and ousted its long-serving CEO, Ken Olsen. DEC would never return to sustained profitability.

苹果丽莎

The Apple Lisa

苹果公司似乎在进行一项受控实验，以了解施乐公司 Star 的商业失败是实施失败还是注定失败的战略，该公司在 1983 年推出的 Lisa 上也尝试了同样的策略。Lisa 的规格与当时的图形工作站相似：摩托罗拉 68000 处理器、清晰的单色屏幕、硬盘驱动器、扩展槽、可同时运行多个应用程序的操作系统以及整整一兆字节的内存。Lisa 上市时的标价为 9,995 美元——相对便宜。与 Star 一样，Lisa 也定位于行政用途，并附带一套视觉效果精美的办公应用程序。与 Star 不同的是，可以为 Lisa 开发软件，但苹果公司并没有让这一切变得简单。Lisa 必须重新启动到不同的基于文本的操作系统才能编译代码。

Seemingly running a controlled experiment to see whether the commercial failure of Xerox’s Star was a failure of implementation or a doomed strategy, Apple tried the same gambit with its Lisa, introduced in 1983. Lisa had specifications similar to the graphical workstations of the era: a Motorola 68000 processor, crisp monochrome screen, hard disk drive, expansion slots, an operating system able to run several applications at once, and a full megabyte of memory. At launch it listed for $9,995—a relative bargain. Like the Star, it was pitched for administrative use and came with a suite of visually polished office applications. Unlike the Star, it was possible to develop software for Lisa, but Apple didn’t make it easy. Lisa had to reboot into a different, text-based operating system to compile code.

和 Star 一样，Lisa 也直接源自 PARC 的工作成果。Apple 从 PARC 挖来了 Larry Tesler 来领导 Lisa 的系统软件开发。这比当时 Unix 工作站上的任何软件都要精致得多。Tesler 开发了面向对象的 Lisa Toolkit 来帮助制作图形应用程序，但对这种编程风格的陌生又是一个额外的挑战。Lisa 复制了 Star 的功能，包括使用模拟桌面来表示文件，但 Apple 努力改进和简化了 Xerox 的方法。例如，Apple 的鼠标上只有一个按钮，并使用桌面隐喻中的操作，例如将文件从一个文件夹拖到另一个文件夹以触发复杂任务。Sun 工作站效仿最初的 Alto，将不同的操作附加到鼠标上的三个按钮上。即使是引入了桌面隐喻的 Star 工作站，也有两个鼠标按钮和许多用于删除、复制和移动等操作的特殊键。

Like Star, Lisa derived directly from the work of PARC. Apple hired Larry Tesler away from PARC to lead the development of system software for Lisa. This was far more polished than anything available on the Unix workstations of the era. Tesler developed the object-oriented Lisa Toolkit to help produce graphical applications, but the unfamiliarity of this style of programming was an additional challenge. Lisa copied features from Star, including its use of a simulated desktop to represent files, but Apple worked hard to refine and simplify the Xerox approach. For example, Apple had only a single button on its mouse and used actions within a desktop metaphor, such as dragging files from one folder to another to trigger complex tasks. Sun workstations attached different actions to each of the three buttons on its mouse, following the original Alto. Even the Star workstation, which had introduced the desktop metaphor, had two mouse buttons and many special keys for actions such as delete, copy, and move.

Byte兴奋地表示，就其市场影响而言，“Lisa 系统是过去五年来计算机领域最重要的发展，轻松超越了 IBM 的^{“Lisa 是一款非常昂贵}的个人电脑，但它也有一些局限性。它的软盘驱动器不可靠，操作系统运行缓慢且经常崩溃。苹果抄袭了施乐的视觉定位，但还没有抄袭其激光打印机，因此无法正确打印它创建的精美文档。尽管有这些缺点，Lisa 还是具备了定义下个十年最强大的个人电脑的核心功能：硬盘、网络、图形用户界面和扩展插槽。用户可以同时加载多个应用程序，在窗口之间进行剪切和粘贴。这不完全是多任务处理，因为后台应用程序被暂停了，但操作系统确实可以防止应用程序相互覆盖。

Byte enthused that in terms of its market impact “the Lisa system is the most important development in computers in the last five years, easily outpacing IBM’s introduction of the Personal Computer.”²⁴ Lisa had some unfortunate limitations. Its floppy drives were unreliable, and its operating system ran slowly and crashed frequently. Apple had copied Xerox’s visual orientation but not yet its laser printer, so there was no way to properly print the beautiful documents it created. Despite those foibles, Lisa had exactly the core capabilities that would define the most powerful personal computers of the next decade: hard disks, networking, a graphical user interface, and slots for expansion. Users could load several applications simultaneously, cutting and pasting between their windows. That wasn’t quite multitasking, as background applications were suspended, but the operating system did prevent applications from overwriting each other.

Lisa 的价格低于 Apollo 工作站，销售速度也更快（Lisa 上市第一年销售量约为 10 万台，而 Apollo 工作站仅售数百台），但 Apollo 是一家面向小众市场的初创公司。25 ¹⁹⁸³年，该公司首次公开募股时，投资者认为其表现非常成功。苹果公司投入巨资为个人电脑制定下一个标准，瞄准了庞大的文档准备市场。与这些高期望相比，Lisa 的开局令人失望。

Lisa cost less than an Apollo workstation and sold much faster (around 100,000 Lisas versus a few hundred Apollo workstations during the first year each was available), but Apollo was a start-up company selling to a niche market.²⁵ Its performance registered with investors as a big success when the firm made its initial public offering in 1983. Apple had spent heavily to set the next standard for personal computing, targeting the huge market for document preparation. Against those high expectations, Lisa was off to a disappointing start.

麦金塔电脑

The Macintosh

在另一个宇宙中，人们可能会想象后续的 Lisa 型号逐渐从 IBM 手中夺取市场份额，因为它们受益于更低的组件成本、改进的软件、新推出的激光打印机和更快的处理器。苹果在 20 世纪 90 年代的实际经验表明，克服现有机器架构的局限性比提高硬件性能要困难得多。但在我们的宇宙中，历史发生了意想不到的转变。

In an alternate universe one might imagine subsequent Lisa models gradually winning market share from IBM as they benefited from lower component costs, improved software, newly available laser printers, and faster processors. Apple’s actual experience in the 1990s demonstrated that it is much harder to overcome the limitations of an established machine architecture than to improve hardware performance. But in our universe, history took a less predictable turn.

苹果公司发展迅速，但它仍是一家饱受内部困境困扰的年轻公司。1979 年，前计算机科学教授杰夫·拉斯金 (Jef Raskin) 启动了一个项目，旨在打造一款内置调制解调器的廉价、友好型个人电脑。史蒂夫·乔布斯接手了这个项目，只保留了廉价个人电脑的理念和 Macintosh 这个名字。他梦想着打造一款独立的小型机器，供个人使用，而不是公司使用。乔布斯与 Lisa 项目的经理们发生了争执，他想以某种方式借用 Lisa 的用户界面来打造这款价格实惠的个人电脑。为了实现这个不可能的目标，他推动 Macintosh 团队创造编码和设计的奇迹。

Apple had grown fast, but it was still a young company plagued by internal struggles. Back in 1979, Jef Raskin, a former computer science professor, had started a project to build a cheap, friendly personal computer with a built-in modem. Steve Jobs took it over, keeping little more than the idea of a cheap personal machine and the name: Macintosh. He dreamed of a self-contained little machine, used by individuals rather than companies. Feuding with the managers of the Lisa project, Jobs wanted to somehow borrow its user interface for this affordable personal computer. In pursuit of this impossible goal, he pushed the Macintosh team to perform miracles of coding and design.

Macintosh 是一个小巧的盒子，几乎是一个立方体，背面有一个像手柄一样的缺口（图 9.3）。盒子里面有一个软盘驱动器，使用索尼新的 3 1/2 英寸格式，一个高分辨率的 9 英寸黑白显示器，以及只有 128 KB 的内存。乔布斯亲自规定了这个小得离谱的内存，只有 Lisa 的八分之一，以降低成本。操作系统的大部分内容都被刻录到 ROM 芯片中，以便腾出 RAM，但团队仍然不得不放弃一些核心 Lisa 功能。与 Apple II 和 IBM PC 不同，Macintosh 是封闭的，也就是说，用户无法添加电路板，甚至不鼓励打开机箱。由于没有扩展槽和内存插槽，因此没有官方的方法来添加硬盘驱动器、连接到网络，甚至扩展内存（尽管工程师确实偷偷地向乔布斯介绍了后来焊接更高容量芯片所需的额外线路）。26^除了省钱之外，这些限制还反映了乔布斯的信念，即他可以为用户做出比他们自己更好的决定，从而提供一台像独立家用电器一样工作的计算机。

The Macintosh was an approachable and diminutive box, almost a cube, with a gap at the back that worked like a handle (figure 9.3). Inside the box were a single floppy disk drive, using Sony’s new 3 1/2-inch format, a high-resolution nine-inch black-on-white monitor, and just 128 KB of memory. Jobs personally mandated this absurdly small memory, one-eighth the size of the Lisa’s, to keep the cost down. Much of the operating system was burned into ROM chips in order to leave RAM free, but the team still had to leave out some core Lisa capabilities. Unlike the Apple II and IBM PC, the Macintosh was closed, that is, users could not add boards and were discouraged from even opening the case. With no expansion slots and no memory sockets, there was no official way to add a hard disk drive, connect to a network, or even expand its memory (although engineers did sneak past Jobs the extra lines needed to solder in higher capacity chips later).²⁶ As well as saving money, these constraints reflected Jobs’s faith that he could make better decisions for its users than they could make for themselves, delivering a computer that worked like a self-contained home appliance.

乔布斯曾对 Macintosh 施加限制以降低其价格，但苹果还是将带有两个软盘驱动器的系统定价为 3,000 美元。如果没有第二个驱动器（在推出后的几个月内无法使用），用户将不断更换磁盘。复制一张软盘至少需要更换五次，有时甚至需要更换二十次。早期用户史蒂文·利维 (Steven Levy) 称这是“一种新的高科技折磨”。其他人开玩笑说这是一种新的医疗状况，“Macintosh 肘” ^。27

Jobs had crippled the Macintosh with restrictions aimed to cut its price, but Apple nevertheless priced a system with two floppy drives at $3,000. Without the second drive, which wasn’t available for several months following launch, users would be swapping disks constantly. Copying a floppy disk would take at least five swaps, sometimes twenty. Steven Levy, an early user, called this “a new high tech form of torture.” Others joked about a new medical condition, “Macintosh elbow.”²⁷

1984 年超级碗期间，苹果公司通过一则传奇性的广告推出了 Macintosh。这则广告夸张地将 IBM 及其单调乏味的个人电脑比作乔治奥威尔笔下的独裁老大哥。Macintosh 团队的成员称乔布斯能够让他们相信在他不在场的情况下极不可信的事情，这种能力被称为“现实扭曲力场”。Macintosh 在这一领域之外推出后，反响平平。Macintosh 系统屏幕小、内存小，不具备可扩展性，其价格仅比同期推出的改进型 Lisa 2 便宜一点点。在最初的销售热潮之后，1984 年销售量约为 25 万台，但苹果很快发现每月仅交付 5,000 台 Macintosh。28^乔布斯的回应是关闭 Lisa 部门，确保 Macintosh 是苹果唯一的前进道路。

Apple introduced the Macintosh with a legendary commercial that ran during the 1984 Super Bowl. This hyperbolically equated IBM and its drab PC with George Orwell’s dictatorial Big Brother. Members of the Macintosh group called Jobs’s ability to convince them of things that, outside his presence, seemed highly implausible as a “reality distortion field.” Launched outside that field, the Macintosh landed with a thud. A Macintosh system with a tiny screen, tiny memory, and no expandability was barely cheaper than the improved Lisa 2 launched at the same time. After an initial flurry of sales, around a quarter of a million in 1984, Apple soon found itself delivering just five thousand Macintosh units a month.²⁸ Jobs responded by shutting down the Lisa division, ensuring that the Macintosh was Apple’s only path forward.

在头一年购买 Macintosh 的少数人倾向于形成一种狂热的崇拜，他们欣赏乔布斯对新机器的物理设计和用户界面的每一个方面所投入的执着关注。整个系统，包括可拆卸的键盘和鼠标，都具有高度的便携性；早期型号附带一个小手提箱。其更快的处理器和精简的操作系统意味着它对用户输入的响应比 Lisa 或施乐机器更快。Mac 优雅的用户界面是其最大的成就。当打开或关闭文件时，其符号会在屏幕上以小步扩展或收缩 - 对于它的粉丝来说，感觉恰到好处。

The few people who did purchase a Macintosh during that first year tended to form a cult-like devotion, appreciating the obsessive attention that Jobs had paid to every aspect of the new machine’s physical design and user interface. The whole system, including the detachable keyboard and mouse, was highly portable; early models came with a small carrying case. Its faster processor and stripped-down operating system meant that it responded to user inputs more rapidly than Lisa or the Xerox machines. The Mac’s elegant user interface was its greatest accomplishment. When a file was opened or closed, its symbol expanded or contracted on the screen in little steps—to its fans, it just felt right.

Macintosh 附带了简单的文字处理和绘画程序，但其他应用程序出现得比较慢。第一个开发系统需要购买 Lisa。图形程序的开发工具很少，可用的编程语言和方法也不太合适。1986 年，Tesler 与 Pascal 的发明者 Niklaus Wirth 协商后，推出了一种新语言 Object Pascal 和一个名为 MacApp 的对象框架。这些利用了面向对象编程与图形用户界面的天然亲和力。随后出现了其他工具和语言，但这种转变对程序员来说是一个挑战^。29

The Macintosh shipped with simple word processing and painting programs, but additional applications were slow to appear. The first development system required purchase of a Lisa. There were few tools for the development of graphical programs, and available programming languages and methods were ill suited. In 1986, Tesler in consultation with Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of Pascal, unveiled a new language, Object Pascal, and an object framework called MacApp. These exploited the natural affinity of object-oriented programming with graphical user interfaces. Other tools and languages followed, but the transition was challenging for programmers.²⁹

1984 年，教育市场是 Macintosh 最有前途的市场。德雷塞尔大学 (Drexel University) 很快将 Mac 标准化，将其作为图形化、交互式教育计算的理想工具。所有新生都必须购买一台，协商后的价格不到零售价的一半^。30

The one Macintosh market that showed great promise in 1984 was education. Drexel University quickly standardized on the Mac as the ideal vehicle for graphical, interactive educational computing. All freshmen were required to purchase one, at a negotiated cost less than half the retail price.³⁰

1985 年春，苹果董事会迫使乔布斯下台。Macintosh 电脑开始重新发展为可扩展的、类似 Lisa 的系统。第一步已经迈出：当乔布斯承认最初的 Macintosh 无法使用时，512 KB 版本被匆忙投入生产。易于使用的网络系统 AppleTalk 于 1985 年推出。1986 年推出的 Macintosh Plus 拥有 1 兆字节内存和硬盘接口，就像 Lisa 一样。

In the spring of 1985, Apple’s board of directors forced out Jobs. Macintosh computers then began to evolve back into expandable, Lisa-like systems. The first step had already been taken: when even Jobs had conceded that the original Macintosh was unusable, a 512 KB version was rushed into production. An easy-to-use networking system, AppleTalk, launched in 1985. The Macintosh Plus, in 1986, had a megabyte of memory and a hard drive interface, just like Lisa.

桌面出版

Desktop Publishing

当 Macintosh Plus 问世时，人们已经发现了它的一个引人注目的用途。桌面出版行业始于 1985 年，当时由 Paul Brainerd 设计的 Aldus PageMaker 上市（见图9.4）。Brainerd 之前曾开发过报纸使用的计算机化生产系统，他意识到，现在有了具备页面设计功能的个人电脑，一个巨大的潜在市场已经打开。31 PageMaker 让^业余爱好者可以修改字体和图形，直到他们的新闻稿或海报看起来恰到好处（对他们来说，而不是对受过培训的设计师来说）。专业人士可以比以前更快地制作出外观精美的页面。

By the time the Macintosh Plus arrived, a compelling use for it had already been discovered. The desktop publishing industry began in 1985 with the launch of Aldus PageMaker, designed by Paul Brainerd (see figure 9.4). Brainerd had previously developed computerized production systems used by newspapers, and he recognized that a large potential market had opened up now that personal computers with the capabilities needed for page design were available.³¹ PageMaker let amateurs tinker with fonts and graphics until their newsletters or posters looked just right (to them, if not to trained designers). Professionals could produce slick-looking pages more rapidly than ever before.

PageMaker 适用于新款 Apple LaserWriter 打印机。这款打印机售价 6,995 美元，比它所连接的 Macintosh 贵得多，但按照 Apple 的标准，价格仍然非常低，因为渲染以 Adob​​e 的新 PostScript 语言描述的页面需要打印机拥有比计算机更强大的处理器和更多内存^。32

PageMaker worked with the new Apple LaserWriter printer. This cost $6,995, far more than the Macintosh it plugged into, yet still aggressively low by Apple’s standards because rendering pages described in Adobe’s new PostScript language required the printer to hold a more powerful processor and more memory than the computer did.³²

正如一位评论者总结的那样，“我数不清有多少次向别人展示我的 Macintosh 时，他们会说：‘但它只是一个玩具。’现在至少我可以向他们展示 PageMaker，并说‘让我们看看你的 IBM 能做到什么。’” ³³感谢 PageMaker，与 Lisa 或 Star 不同，Macintosh 为一小部分但明确界定的用户提供了极具吸引力的商业案例。图形计算对于一般办公用途来说仍然过于昂贵，但对于需要制作高质量印刷品的人来说，如果它可以消除与传统印刷店合作的成本和延迟，那么它就是一笔划算的交易^。34

As one reviewer concluded, “I can’t count the number of times I’ve shown someone my Macintosh and they’ve said: ‘But it’s just a toy.…’ Now at least I can show PageMaker to them and say ‘Let’s see your IBM do that.’”³³ Thanks to PageMaker, the Macintosh, unlike Lisa or Star, offered a compelling business case to a small but well-defined group of users. Graphical computing was still too expensive for general office use, but for people who needed to produce high-quality printed output, it was a bargain if it eliminated the cost and delays of working with a traditional print shop.³⁴

这个市场支撑着苹果公司度过了 20 世纪 80 年代中期，而 Macintosh 的使用范围则扩大到更多的学校和大学，并且这款机器成为了富裕人士和成功作家的最爱。随着 Adob​​e 的 Illustrator 绘图软件包和 Photoshop 图像处理软件包的推出，Macintosh 在图形设计和出版市场的主导地位得到了进一步加强。

This market supported Apple through the mid-1980s, while Macintosh use spread through more schools and universities and the machine became a favorite with affluent individuals and successful writers. The Macintosh’s dominance of the graphical design and publishing market was reinforced with the arrival of Adobe’s Illustrator package for drawing and Photoshop for image manipulation.

苹果公司对此作出反应，将其产品重新定位为专业用途。1987 年推出的 Macintosh II 系列重新安装了乔布斯取消的扩展槽，并且像 Lisa 一样，可以与全尺寸显示器一起使用。在接下来的十年里，高端 Macintosh 硬件的规格大致相当于或略优于最昂贵的 PC 兼容系统。Macintosh 价格更高，但硬件利用率更高，可提供更精致的体验。

Apple reacted by reorienting its products toward professional use. The Macintosh II series, launched in 1987, put back the expansion slots that Jobs had stripped out and, like Lisa, could be used with full-sized monitors. For the rest of the decade, high-end Macintosh hardware had specifications roughly equivalent to or slightly better than the most expensive PC-compatible systems. Macintoshes were pricier but utilized their hardware more effectively to give a far more polished experience.

Macintosh 竞争对手

Macintosh Competitors

Macintosh 只是挑战 IBM PC 主导地位的新平台之一。可以稍微夸张地说，20 世纪 80 年代中期，所有不致力于 IBM 兼容性的设计团队最终都围绕摩托罗拉 68000 系列处理器打造了计算机。就连 Sinclair 也希望在其 Spectrum 家用计算机之后推出一款功能更强大的面向企业的机型，于是在其 1984 年推出的名为 Quantum Leap 的乐观机型中也选择了一款处理器。这款机型最终以失败告终。

The Macintosh was just one of the new platforms challenging the dominance of the IBM PC. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that every design team of the mid-1980s that wasn’t committed to IBM compatibility finished up building its computer around a processor from Motorola’s 68000 range. Even Sinclair, looking to follow up its Spectrum home computer with a more powerful business-oriented model, chose one for its optimistically named Quantum Leap, launched in 1984. It was a dramatic flop.

除了 Macintosh，两个最成功的新兴平台是 Commodore Amiga 和 Atari ST，它们都于 1985 年推出。这两款计算机功能强大，至少有 512 KB 的 RAM、3 1/2 英寸软盘驱动器和 68000 个处理器。Atari 的口号是“无价之宝”。它的 ST 售价仅为同类 Macintosh 的一半，并增加了彩色图形功能。Atari 从 Digital Research 获得了图形环境管理器 (GEM) 窗口系统和 CP/M 的变体的许可。与 Apple 相比，它的硬件和软件显得笨拙，但Byte宣称它在可预见的未来“性价比明显领先”。35 ^Amiga最初要贵得多，但配备了独特强大的声音和图形芯片，使其成为视频制作和游戏的首选。

Besides the Macintosh, the two most successful upstart platforms, both launched in 1985, were the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST. Both were powerful computers with at least 512 KB of RAM, 3 1/2-inch floppy disk drives, and 68000 processors. Atari’s slogan was “Power Without The Price.” Its ST sold for half the price of a comparable Macintosh and added color graphics capabilities. Atari licensed the graphics environment manager (GEM) windowing system and a variant of CP/M from Digital Research. Its hardware and particularly its software were clumsy in comparison with Apple’s, but Byte proclaimed it the “clear leader in price/performance” for the foreseeable future.³⁵ Amiga was initially far more expensive but included uniquely powerful sound and graphics chips, making it a favorite for video production work and game playing.

20 世纪 80 年代中期，Amiga 和 ST 的销量与 Macintosh 以及当时最大的 PC 兼容公司（如 Compaq 和 IBM 本身）的销量相当。它们在欧洲的销量尤其好，主要销往小型企业和电脑爱好者，对他们来说，兼容性和精致度比价值更重要。与早期的家用电脑一样，它们在资金有限的视频游戏玩家中很受欢迎，部分原因是磁盘比游戏卡带更容易非法复制。

Amiga and ST sales in the mid-1980s compared well with those of the Macintosh and with all but the largest PC-compatible firms of the era, such as Compaq and IBM itself. They sold particularly well in Europe, to small businesses and computer enthusiasts for whom compatibility and polish were less important than value. Like earlier home computers, they were popular for video game players with limited funds, in part because disks were much easier to illegally copy than game cartridges.

尽管便携式和电池供电的 DOS 计算机在 20 世纪 80 年代末变得越来越实用，但类似 ​​Macintosh 的计算机所需的芯片、屏幕和硬盘耗电太快，现有的电池技术无法支持。1989 年，苹果公司推出了售价 7,000 美元的 Macintosh Portable。它的规格引起了极大的兴奋：功能齐全的 Macintosh，配有硬盘驱动器，可依靠电池供电。它采用了一个相对较大的屏幕（9.8 英寸），首次可以显示鼠标指针等移动物体而不会出现可怕的模糊。一篇评论称“试图描述”新的“有源矩阵”显示面板的性能是一项“不可能完成的任务——你必须亲眼看到才能相信”。36^但它的便携性受到 16 磅重量的严重限制，这主要是由于苹果公司需要使用铅酸电池来确保数小时的电量。³⁷它的竞争对手是 Atari ST 的便携式版本，实用性更差：半小时内就消耗了 12 节 Duracell 一次性电池。38^现有技术迫使人们做出许多权衡，因此图形用户界面在接下来的几年里依然牢牢地局限于办公桌上。

Although portable and battery-powered DOS computers were becoming more practical during the late 1980s, the chips, screens, and hard disks needed by Macintosh-like computers consumed power too quickly for existing battery technologies to be workable. In 1989, Apple unveiled its $7,000 Macintosh Portable. Its specification sparked great excitement: a fully featured Macintosh with a hard disk drive that could run on battery power. It incorporated a relatively large (9.8-inch) screen that could, for the first time, display moving objects like mouse pointers without blurring horribly. A review called “trying to describe” the performance of the new “active matrix” display panel an “impossible task—you have to see it to believe it.”³⁶ But its portability was severely limited by a 16-pound weight, mostly from the lead-acid battery Apple needed to ensure several hours of power.³⁷ One rival, a portable version of the Atari ST, was even less practical: it consumed twelve Duracell disposable batteries in half an hour.³⁸ Available technology forced so many tradeoffs that graphical user interfaces remained firmly desk bound for a few more years.

Commodore 最终成为苹果最成功的竞争对手，仅在 20 世纪 80 年代末，它就在英国和德国销售了数百万台 Amigas，其中大部分是家用的低成本 A500 型号。39^但无论是 Atari 还是 Commodore 都没有足够的利润率来复制苹果的精致操作系统，也没有足够的市场份额来从规模经济中获益，从而降低成本并提高 PC 组件的性能。这两家公司在提高其机器的处理器速度和图形处理能力方面都进展缓慢。到 1991 年，它们不再在快速发展的 PC 平台上占据明显优势，甚至在视频游戏玩家或图形处理工作方面也是如此。

Commodore was eventually the most successful of the Apple’s rivals, selling several million Amigas in the UK and Germany alone in the late 1980s, most of them low-cost A500 models for home use.³⁹ But neither Atari nor Commodore had the profit margins to duplicate Apple’s polished operating system, or the market share to benefit from the economies of scale that drove down costs and pushed up performance for PC components. Both firms were slow to improve the processor speeds and graphical capabilities of their machines. By 1991, they no longer held clear advantages over the rapidly evolving PC platform, even for video gamers or graphics work.

NeXT 是史蒂夫·乔布斯在被苹果解雇后于 1985 年创立的，该公司推出了一系列高端图形工作站，也基于 68000 芯片。乔布斯注意到苹果在教育领域的成功，因此最初将销售范围限制在大学。40 ^NeXT的商业路径比 Commodore 更稳定：尽管在 1990 年推出了第二代机型并开始在高等教育市场之外推广其工作站，但其销量从小到大一直很小。它总共售出了约 50,000 台，其中许多是华尔街公司和寻求快速软件开发能力的国家安全机构。

NeXT, founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs after he was fired from Apple, offered a high-end line of graphical workstations also based on 68000 chips. Noting Apple’s success in education, Jobs initially restricted sales to universities.⁴⁰ NeXT’s commercial path was more consistent than Commodore’s: its sales started small and remained tiny, despite introducing a second-generation model in 1990 and beginning to promote its workstations outside the higher education market. It sold around 50,000 in all, many to Wall Street firms and national security agencies looking for rapid software development capabilities.

1993 年，ST 系列停产，NeXT 放弃了销售计算机的尝试，转而将重点转向开发能够在标准 PC 硬件上运行的强大操作系统版本。第二年，Commodore International 宣布破产。Macintosh 成为唯一能够挑战 PC 硬件标准主导地位的有力挑战者。但那时，微软已经通过其新近流行的 Windows 操作系统为普通 PC 提供了可靠的图形用户界面。新功能正在进入计算的主流，并进一步扩大了计算机的实际通用性。

In 1993, the ST family was discontinued and NeXT gave up on trying to sell computers and shifted its focus to developing a version of its powerful operating system able to run on standard PC hardware. The next year Commodore International declared bankruptcy. The Macintosh was left as the only serious challenger to the dominance of the PC hardware standard. But by then, Microsoft had provided a credible graphical user interface to ordinary PCs with its newly popular Windows operating system. New capabilities were entering the mainstream of computing, and with them a further expansion in the practical universality of computers.

早期替代方案

Early Alternatives

DOS 缺乏对多用户或多任务的支持，这也许是其最根本的弱点。微软向计算机制造商出售了自己的 Unix 版本 Xenix，作为 MS-DOS 的更强大替代品。Xenix 可在 286 PC 上运行，为多个连接的终端供电。微软将 Xenix 描述为个人计算的未来，而将 MS-DOS 描述为权宜之计。当 MS-DOS 2 发布时，微软承诺其与 Xenix 兼容的功能（如分层目录和管道）将使过渡更加容易。2 DOS 的³版最初被认为是一个与 Xenix 密切相关的多用户、多任务操作系统。这个梦想破灭了，部分原因是 1984 年贝尔系统让 AT&T 得以出售 Unix 与微软竞争，部分原因是 Xenix 无法运行最初吸引大多数用户使用 PC 的应用程序。微软将 Xenix 转让给一家规模较小的公司 Santa Cruz Operation。

DOS’s lack of support for multiple users or multitasking was perhaps the most fundamental of its weaknesses. Microsoft sold its own version of Unix, called Xenix, to computer builders as a more powerful alternative to MS-DOS. Running on a 286 PC, Xenix could power several attached terminals. Microsoft described Xenix as the future of personal computing and MS-DOS as a stopgap. When MS-DOS 2 launched, Microsoft promised that its Xenix-compatible features like hierarchical directories and pipes would make the transition easier.² Version 3 of DOS was originally supposed to be a multiuser, multitasking operating system with close ties to Xenix. That dream faded, in part because in 1984 the Bell System freed AT&T to sell Unix in competition with Microsoft, and in part because Xenix could not run the applications that attracted most users to the PC in the first place. Microsoft passed Xenix on to a smaller company, The Santa Cruz Operation.

DOS 的另一个缺点是缺乏图形用户界面。在 Macintosh 发布之前，各家公司就试图为 IBM PC 提供类似 Xerox 的界面。1982 年，VisiCalc 的创建者为 IBM PC 发布了一款名为 VisiOn 的产品，但该产品在市场上遭遇惨败，最终导致公司破产。IBM 为 DOS 开发了一个名为 TopView 的基于文本的窗口系统，1985 年，Digital Research 推出了类似 Macintosh 的 GEM 界面的 PC 版本。微软自己的同类产品是 Windows，它运行在 MS-DOS 之上。Windows 可以多任务处理专门编写的图形应用程序，尽管不是很流畅。第一个版本于 1985 年底发布，几乎完全没用。在玩过版本中附带的极具挑战性的黑白棋游戏后，大多数用户都觉得没有什么理由再次启动它。

Another shortcoming of DOS was its lack of a graphical user interface. Even before the Macintosh’s announcement, companies were trying to provide Xerox-like interfaces for the IBM PC. In 1982, the creators of VisiCalc announced a product called VisiOn for the IBM PC, which failed badly enough in the marketplace to destroy their company. IBM developed a text-based windowing system for DOS called TopView, and in 1985 Digital Research launched a PC version of its Macintosh-like GEM interface. Microsoft’s own equivalent was Windows, which ran on top of MS-DOS. Windows could multitask specially written graphical applications, although not smoothly. The first version, released in late 1985, was almost entirely useless. After playing with the surprisingly challenging Reversi game included with the release, most users found little reason to launch it again.

这些产品都没有得到广泛采用。记者约翰·马尔科夫 (John Markoff) 在 1983 年对 PC 的五种窗口系统进行了总结，结论是它们“实际上在乞求更快的硬件”。3 ^GEM、Windows、TopView 和 VisiOn 也不同程度地受到缺乏支持或与流行应用程序不兼容、苹果公司虚假但分散注意力的法律挑战以及过度复杂性。4 ^Windows和 GEM 被设计用于与特殊的类似 Macintosh 的应用程序协同工作，这又引发了一个进一步的问题：因为程序是为 DOS 编写的，所以很少有用户运行 Windows 或 GEM；但是因为很少有用户运行 Windows 或 GEM，所以大多数程序都是为 DOS 编写的。

None of these products were widely adopted. A 1983 roundup of five windowing systems for the PC by journalist John Markoff concluded that they were “literally begging for faster hardware.”³ GEM, Windows, TopView, and VisiOn also suffered, in varying proportions, from lack of support or compatibility with popular applications, spurious but distracting legal challenges from Apple, and excessive complexity.⁴ Windows and GEM were designed to work with special Macintosh-like applications, raising a further problem: because programs were written for DOS, few users ran Windows or GEM; but because few users ran Windows or GEM, most programs were written for DOS.

DOS 的局限性尤其让使用英特尔 386 处理器的高端 PC 用户感到沮丧。与 286 芯片相比，DOS 有了很大的进步，286 芯片具有运行旧式代码的兼容模式和访问更多 RAM 和多任务程序的新模式，但无法将这两种模式结合起来。然而，DOS 忽略了英特尔为原始 PC 处理器编写的多任务程序添加的新功能。

The limitations of DOS were particularly frustrating for users of high-end PCs built around Intel’s 386 processor. It was a big step forward from the 286 chip, which had a compatibility mode run for old-style code and new mode to access more RAM and multitask programs but couldn’t combine the two regimes. Yet DOS ignored the new features Intel had added to multitask programs written for the processor used in the original PC.

OS/2 原本应该取代 DOS 和 Windows，但它也没有完全解决问题。IBM 坚持 OS/2 只能在 286 机型上运行，这意味着放弃 386 的优势。当 OS/2 的第一个合理实用版本于 1989 年发布时，这似乎是一个糟糕的决定。OS/2 需要如此多的 RAM 和处理器能力，以至于没有 386 或更高处理器的人都不会尝试使用它。WordPerfect 和 Lotus 1-2-3 等流行软件的 OS/2 版本尚未推出，但支持 286 的决定意味着 OS/2 一次只能加载一个 MS-DOS 程序。对于大多数潜在用户来说，这使得它的优势更多的是理论上的，而不是实际的。

OS/2, which was supposed to replace both DOS and Windows, didn’t fully solve the problem either. IBM insisted that OS/2 run on 286 models, which meant forgoing the advantages of the 386. By the time the first reasonably practical version of OS/2 was released in 1989, that already looked like a bad decision. OS/2 needed so much RAM and processor power that nobody without a 386 or better processor would attempt to use it. OS/2 versions of popular software like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 weren’t yet available, but the decision to support the 286 meant that OS/2 could load only one MS-DOS program at a time. That made its advantages more theoretical than practical for most potential users.

Windows 3

Windows 3

1990 年 5 月 22 日，微软发布了 Windows 3.0。微软在纽约举行了盛大的发布会，大肆宣传，但除了计算机业内人士之外，这并不是什么特别值得报道的事件。以前的 Windows 版本都已经发布，但只赢得了一小部分 MS-DOS 用户的支持。Macintosh 用户对其平台的卓越稳定性、优雅性和性能赞不绝口。微软本身仍然公开致力于 OS/2，将 Windows 定位为功能较弱的计算机用户的权宜之计和解决方案。

On May 22, 1990, Microsoft issued Windows 3.0. Microsoft hyped it with a big launch party in New York City, but this was not, beyond computer industry insiders, a particularly newsworthy event. Previous versions of Windows had come and gone without winning over more than a tiny fraction of the MS-DOS user base. Macintosh users crowed about the superior stability, elegance, and performance of their platform. Microsoft itself was still publicly committed to OS/2, positioning Windows as a stop-gap and solution for users with less powerful computers.

相反，Windows 3.0 却一炮打响，这款产品最终将主流计算机用户带入了图形用户界面时代（图 10.1）。Windows 仍然不如 Macintosh 系统优雅，但苹果收取了高额溢价。想要购买新电脑的人可以通过选择 Windows 电脑获得更大的硬盘、更大的屏幕和更多的内存。Windows 运行良好，可以使用越来越多与 Macintosh 非常相似的强大应用程序来完成工作。1991 年，这些程序已经包括微软自己的 Word for Windows 和 Excel、Corel Draw！（一种类似于 Macintosh 最受欢迎的 Adob​​e Illustrator 的图形程序）和 Aldus PageMaker。寻求高保真再现的专业杂志出版商和图形艺术家坚持使用 Macintosh，但办公室职员和拥有普通电脑的家庭用户现在可以享受关键的图形计算的好处：在文档中混合文本和图形、在应用程序之间剪切和粘贴以及查看与打印输出相匹配的屏幕预览。

Instead, Windows 3.0 was a breakout hit, the product that finally shifted mainstream computer users into the age of the graphical user interface (figure 10.1). Windows was still not as elegant as the Macintosh system, but Apple charged a hefty premium. Someone looking for a new computer could get a bigger hard drive, larger screen, and more memory by choosing a Windows computer. Windows worked well enough to get work done with a growing number of powerful application programs that closely resembled their Macintosh counterparts. In 1991, those already included Microsoft’s own Word for Windows and Excel, Corel Draw! (a graphics program similar to Macintosh favorite Adobe Illustrator), and Aldus PageMaker. Professional magazine publishers and graphical artists looking for high-fidelity reproduction stuck with the Macintosh, but office workers and home users with ordinary computers were now able to enjoy the key benefits of graphical computing: mixing text and graphics in documents, cutting and pasting between applications, and seeing screen previews that matched printed output.

更重要的是，运行 Windows 的 PC 仍然是 PC。数以千计的 DOS 程序可以满足各种可能的需求，包括业余爱好者软件包（如占星表生成器）、IBM 终端仿真等小众程序，以及为特定组织编写或定制的无数应用程序。对于其中大部分，Windows 替代品还需要数年时间才能面世，但现有的 DOS 代码通常可以在 Windows 下正常运行，有时可以顺利地进行多任务处理，以利用 386 处理器的新功能。在 Windows 中根本无法运行的激进编码的 MS-DOS 程序仍然可以使用，方法是退出 Windows 以进入标准 DOS 命令行。许多用户继续花费大部分时间他们大部分时间都在使用 DOS，只有在使用图形密集型程序时才会启动 Windows，或者更频繁地在午休时间玩一轮令人上瘾的纸牌游戏 Solitaire。在推出后的头几个月里，Solitaire 是最常见的 Windows 3 原生应用程序。它让用户熟悉了 Windows 用户界面，并说服他们继续安装 Windows。

More importantly, a PC running Windows was still a PC. Thousands of DOS programs handled every possible need, including hobbyist packages such as astrological table generators, niches such as IBM terminal emulation, and untold numbers of applications written or customized for particular organizations. It would be years until Windows alternatives would be available for most of these, but the existing DOS code would usually run fine under Windows and could sometimes be smoothly multitasked to exploit the new capabilities of 386 processors. Aggressively coded MS-DOS programs that wouldn’t run at all inside Windows could still be used, by exiting Windows to reach the standard DOS command line. Many users continued to spend most of their time in DOS, starting up Windows only to use a graphically intensive program or, perhaps more frequently, for a round of the perplexingly addictive card game Solitaire during the lunch break. For the first few months after its launch, Solitaire was the most commonly glimpsed native Windows 3 application. It familiarized users with the Windows user interface and persuaded them to keep Windows installed.

Windows 开始占据主导地位

Windows Begins to Dominate

到 1992 年中期，微软已售出超过一千万份 Windows 3。5^受此成功的鼓舞，微软发布了一系列 Windows 3 更新和针对 Windows 优化的新 DOS 版本。这些更新修复了错误、改善了用户界面中的一些粗糙之处、增加了网络功能和可调整屏幕和打印机字体大小的字体，并大大增强了多媒体功能。它们还显著提高了性能；例如，Windows 在访问磁盘驱动器时开始完全绕过 DOS。再加上大量 Windows 应用程序，这些微调使 Windows 对大型企业的吸引力越来越大。几年之内，大多数企业台式电脑都运行 Windows，电脑制造商在大多数新机器上预装了 DOS 和 Windows。

By mid-1992, Microsoft had sold more than ten million copies of Windows 3.⁵ Spurred by this success, Microsoft issued a series of updates to Windows 3 and new DOS versions optimized for Windows. Together, these updates fixed bugs, smoothed some rough edges in the user interface, added networking capabilities and resizable fonts for screen and printer, and greatly enhanced multimedia capabilities. They also significantly improved performance; for example, Windows began to bypass DOS entirely when accessing disk drives. Combined with the flood of Windows applications, this fine-tuning made Windows increasingly attractive to large businesses. Within a few years, most corporate desktop computers were running Windows, and computer manufacturers were preinstalling both DOS and Windows on most new machines.

Windows 的成功结束了 IBM 和微软在 OS/2 上本已紧张的合作。IBM 投入大量资金开发 OS/2 2.0 版，该版本于 1992 年推出。IBM 意识到大多数软件尚未以 OS/2 版本制作，因此增加了对多任务 DOS 程序和运行 Windows 程序的支持。其营销口号是“比 DOS 更好的 DOS，比 Windows 更好的 Windows”。但无论是这一口号，还是 1994 年推出 OS/2 Warp 版本以提高性能的努力，都未能减缓 Windows 的崛起。

The success of Windows ended the already strained collaboration of IBM and Microsoft on OS/2. IBM poured a fortune into developing version 2.0 of OS/2, which shipped in 1992. Recognizing that most software had not yet been produced in OS/2 versions, IBM added support for multitasking DOS programs and for running Windows programs. Its marketing slogan was “A better DOS than DOS, and a better Windows than Windows.” But neither this nor a push, in 1994, to boost performance with the OS/2 Warp release, came close to slowing the rise of Windows.

微软积极挑战那些开发附加产品以增强 DOS 功能的软件公司，将这些功能整合到新版本的 MS-DOS 或 Windows 中。例如，1990 年，Stac 推出了 Stacker，通过压缩内容有效地将硬盘容量翻倍。Windows 占用的硬盘空间比 DOS 多得多，而 Stacker 恰逢其时。1993 年，微软开始在 MS-DOS 6.0 中免费提供同样的技术，摧毁了 Stacker 的市场。微软输掉了一场专利侵权诉讼，最终向 Stac 支付了专利费，但成功阻止了新软件市场的出现。

Microsoft aggressively challenged software firms who developed add-on products that boosted DOS capabilities, by incorporating those capabilities into new versions of MS-DOS or Windows. For example, in 1990 Stac introduced Stacker, which effectively doubled hard disk capacities by compressing their content. Windows took up a lot more hard drive space than DOS had, and Stacker was a well-timed hit. In 1993, Microsoft started giving away the same technology in MS-DOS 6.0, destroying the market for Stacker. Microsoft lost a patent infringement lawsuit and finished up paying royalties to Stac, but succeeded in preventing the emergence of a new software market.

随着 Windows 的功能越来越强大、越来越受欢迎，它对 MS-DOS 的依赖开始显得更像是一种障碍，而不是一种优势。例如，安装声卡​​和 CD-ROM 驱动器的人必须手动移动声卡上的微型塑料跳线来设置它应该使用的 IRQ 和内存范围。尝试的前几个设置可能会导致卡静音、导致其他硬件停止工作或使计算机完全无法运行。然后需要配置两个 DOS和 Windows 才能使用新硬件，这是一个涉及驱动程序磁盘和配置实用程序的复杂过程。要使 CD-ROM 驱动器正常工作，就需要编辑 CONFIG.SYS 和 AUTOEXEC.BAT 文件以插入明显的乱码，如“DEVICEHIGH = C:\DOS\aspicd.sys /d:mscd0000”和“MSCDEX /D:mscd0000 /l:k”。

As Windows grew in power and popularity, its reliance on MS-DOS started to seem more a handicap than an advantage. For example, someone installing a sound card and CD-ROM drive had to manually move tiny plastic jumpers around on the sound card to set the IRQ and memory range that it should use. The first few settings tried would probably leave the card mute, cause some other piece of hardware to stop working, or make the computer completely inoperable. It was then necessary to configure both DOS and Windows to use the new hardware, a complex process involving driver disks and configuration utilities. Making the CD-ROM drive work meant editing the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files to insert apparent gibberish like “DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\aspicd.sys /d:mscd0000” and “MSCDEX /D:mscd0000 /l:k.”

Windows 3 的其他限制继承自 Windows 第一个版本中做出的决定。最限制性的是决定将每个当前正在运行的程序的用户界面组件信息存储在单个 64 KB 内存段中。只有一两兆字节 RAM 的计算机用户永远无法打开足够多的程序，因此这不会成为问题，但随着 Windows 的多任务处理功能迫使用户购买更多内存，当他们的计算机宣布“系统资源”用尽，然后拒绝打开更多程序而大部分内存处于闲置状态时，他们感到沮丧。

Other limitations of Windows 3 were inherited from decisions made in the first version of Windows. The most constraining was a decision to store information on the user interface components of every currently running program in a single 64 KB memory segment. Users of computers with just a megabyte or two of RAM would never open enough programs for this to be a problem, but as the multitasking capabilities of Windows pushed users into paying for more memory, they were frustrated when their computer announced that it had run out of “system resources” and then refused to open more programs while most of its memory sat unused.

微软办公软件

Microsoft Office

微软在早期提供的产品范围很广，从 Fortran、COBOL 和 Pascal 等编程语言到少数游戏。然而，它的利润主要来自两种产品：微软早期的成功建立在 BASIC 之上，到 20 世纪 80 年代中期，大部分收入来自 DOS。与 Lotus 1-2-3 等竞争对手相比，其 MS-DOS 电子表格软件包销量不佳。其 DOS 文字处理器 Word 拥有坚实的基础和简洁的用户界面，由查尔斯·西蒙尼 (Charles Simonyi) 设计，后者曾在 PARC 制作 Bravo 编辑器，但它对 WordPerfect 几乎没有构成重大竞争。

In its early years, Microsoft offered a wide range of products from programming languages such as Fortran, COBOL, and Pascal to a handful of games. However, its profits came mostly from two products: Microsoft’s early success was built on BASIC, and by the mid-1980s most revenues came from DOS. Its spreadsheet package for MS-DOS sold poorly in comparison with competitors such as Lotus 1-2-3. Word, its DOS word processor, had a solid foundation and a clean user interface designed by Charles Simonyi, who had earlier produced the Bravo editor at PARC, but it posed little serious competition to WordPerfect.

转向 Windows 改变了这一切。到 1991 年，微软超过 50% 的收入来自应用程序。微软在 Windows 3.0 发布之前就已经制作了功能强大的 Windows 版本应用程序，但除了 Excel 电子表格外，这些应用程序很少使用。当 Windows 突然流行起来时，Word（图 10.2）和 Excel 开始大卖。竞争对手花了数年时间才制作出同样精致的 Windows 软件。

The shift to Windows changed all that. By 1991, over 50 percent of Microsoft’s revenues came from applications. Microsoft had produced capable Windows versions of its applications even before the launch of Windows 3.0, but with the exception of the Excel spreadsheet, these were little used. When Windows suddenly took off, Word (figure 10.2) and Excel began to sell in huge numbers. Competitors took years to produce comparably polished Windows software.

微软之所以能够为 Windows 推出一套功能强大、成熟且易于使用的办公应用程序，很大程度上要归功于其早期在 Macintosh 上的经验。尽管比尔盖茨和史蒂夫乔布斯通常被人们视为死对头，但他们的公司经常合作。当 Mac 于 1984 年问世时，它几乎没有任何应用软件。对于文字处理，苹果只提供了 MacWrite，它展示了 Mac 的图形界面，但远远落后于领先的 PC 软件包的文字处理能力。例如，它无法处理超过十页的文档。6微软最初为 Macintosh 设计了 ​​Excel 和 Word 的图形版本。^这两个都是一流的软件包，让微软在生产 Windows 应用程序时获得了显著的领先优势。

Microsoft’s ability to field a powerful, mature, and easy-to-use set of office applications for Windows owed a lot to its earlier experiences with the Macintosh. Although Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are typically remembered as mortal enemies, their companies often worked together. When the Mac appeared in 1984, it had almost no applications software. For word processing, Apple offered only MacWrite, which showed off the Mac’s graphical interface but lagged far behind the word processing capabilities of leading PC packages. It could not, for example, handle documents of more than ten pages.⁶ Microsoft originally designed both Excel and the graphical version of Word for the Macintosh. Both were first-rate packages, giving Microsoft a significant head start when it was time to produce Windows applications.

Windows 为办公软件用户带来了显著的优势。其更一致的用户界面使新程序更容易上手。它更善于在程序之间移动数据或图片，例如，在电子表格中创建图表并将其发布在报告中。在 DOS 中，这意味着打开一个程序，导出数据，关闭该程序，然后启动另一个程序。Windows 允许用户并排运行程序，从一个程序剪切并粘贴到另一个程序中。其所见即所得的方法使操作屏幕上的图形、字体和其他格式变得容易，而不必处理神秘的控制代码并反复打印测试副本。这种方法比早期开发“集成”MS-DOS 办公软件（将电子表格、数据库和文字处理功能整合到一个程序中）的效果更好。Lotus 为 IBM PC 提供了一个名为 Symphony 的软件包，并正在为 Mac 开发一个名为 Jazz 的软件包。在 Ashton-Tate，施乐 PARC 校友罗伯特·卡尔开发了一个名为 Framework 的软件包。两者都没有得到广泛使用。为了满足家庭用户的需求，微软和苹果也推出了简单的集成套件，都称为Works。

Windows brought compelling advantages to office software users. Its more consistent user interface made it easier to pick up a new program. It was better at moving data or pictures between programs, for example, creating a graph in a spreadsheet and publishing it in a report. In DOS that meant opening one program, exporting the data, closing that program, and launching a different one. Windows let users run programs side by side, cutting from one and pasting into the other. Its WYSIWYG approach made it easy to manipulate graphics, fonts, and other formatting on-screen rather than messing with cryptic control codes and repeatedly printing test copies. This approach worked better than earlier efforts to produce “integrated” MS-DOS office software that combined spreadsheets, database, and word processing capabilities into a single program. Lotus offered such a package called Symphony for the IBM PC and was working on one for the Mac called Jazz. At Ashton-Tate, a Xerox PARC alumnus named Robert Carr developed a package called Framework. Neither was widely used. To satisfy the needs of home users, Microsoft and Apple also produced simple integrated suites, both called Works.

微软自 1989 年以来一直在尝试捆绑其核心 Macintosh 应用程序 Word、Mail、Excel（电子表格）和 PowerPoint（演示文稿）。到 1992 年，该捆绑包已扩展到 Windows，并冠以 Microsoft Office Suite 的品牌，并大幅降价至 500 美元左右。这大约是竞争对手单个程序的价格，因此，喜欢 Excel 胜过 Lotus 1-2-3 的人可能会购买整个 Office 捆绑包，这也剥夺了 WordPerfect 的销售机会。7^大公司开始将 Office 标准化。该公司应用程序团队负责人 Mike Maples 夸口说：“我的工作是在软件应用程序市场中获得公平的份额，对我来说，那就是 100%。” ⁸ Office 的后续版本（最著名的是 Office 95）改进了集成度，并提供了各种其他应用程序，这些应用程序随捆绑包的不同版本一起出现和发布。

Microsoft had been experimenting since 1989 with bundles of its core Macintosh application programs Word, Mail, Excel (spreadsheet), and PowerPoint (presentations). By 1992 the bundle had been extended to Windows, branded the Microsoft Office Suite, and aggressively repriced to sell for around $500. That was about the price of a single program from a competitor, and thus someone who preferred Excel to Lotus 1-2-3 was likely to pick up the whole Office bundle, also depriving WordPerfect of a possible sale.⁷ Large firms began to standardize on Office. Mike Maples, leader of the firm’s application team, boasted that “My job is to get a fair share of the software application market, and to me that’s 100 percent.”⁸ Later releases of Office, most notably Office 95, improved integration and offered a variety of other applications that came and went with different editions and versions of the bundle.

PowerPoint 最初是 Office 产品中最弱的一款，它基于微软于 1987 年购买的 Macintosh 应用程序。因此，它特别受益于捆绑策略——既然已经获得了一个基本够用的免费附加包，为什么要花数百美元购买更优秀的竞争对手？随着 PowerPoint 成为一种无处不在的演示工具，首先是在公司会议上，最后是在小学课堂上，它对人类思维和互动的影响经常受到批评。谷歌的 Peter Norvig 表示，使用它“使得演讲者和观众之间更难进行公开交流，更难传达不符合大纲格式的想法，更难进行真正鼓舞人心的演讲。”他用亚伯拉罕·林肯的葛底斯堡演说的模仿 PowerPoint 版本来说明后一点^。9

PowerPoint was initially the weakest of the Office products, based on a Macintosh application Microsoft had purchased in 1987. It therefore benefited particularly from the bundling strategy—why spend hundreds of dollars on a superior rival after having received a largely adequate package as free add-on? As PowerPoint became a ubiquitous vehicle for presentations, first at corporate meetings and eventually in elementary school classrooms, its influence on human thought and interaction has frequently been criticized. Google’s Peter Norvig suggested that its use “makes it harder to have an open exchange between presenter and audience, to convey ideas that do not neatly fit into outline format, or to have a truly inspiring presentation.” He illustrated the latter point with a parodic PowerPoint version of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.⁹

随着微软扩大其 Windows 软件的范围，它最终推出了一款与竞争对手公司生产的每款显著成功的应用程序相竞争的产品，这些产品涉及小型企业会计、绘图和桌面出版等领域。并非所有这些产品都取得了成功，但其快速的增长和产品的普及使微软成为当时最杰出的美国公司之一。比尔盖茨成为残酷商业竞争和计算机文化年轻人痴迷傲慢的象征。热爱 Unix 的计算机科学教授和注重设计的苹果粉丝看不起 DOS 和 Windows，但财务结果却难以忽视。微软的利润和股价逐年上涨，创造了一批又一批持有期权的百万富翁。

As Microsoft expanded its range of Windows software, it eventually rolled out a rival to every notably successful application produced by a rival company, in areas such as small business accounting, drawing, and desktop publishing. Not all of these succeeded, but its rapid growth and the ubiquity of its products made Microsoft one of the most prominent American companies of the era. Bill Gates became a symbol of ruthless business competition and of the youthful obsessive arrogance of computing culture. Unix-loving computer science professors and design-oriented Apple fans looked down on DOS and Windows, but the financial results were hard to ignore. Microsoft’s profits, and share price, rose year after year to create cohort after cohort of option-holding millionaires.

1994 年，以观察最新文化潮流而闻名的年轻小说家道格拉斯·科普兰 (Douglas Copeland)在《连线》杂志上发表了小说《微软人渣》的开篇。他令人难忘的笔触将微软描述为一个单一文化的社会，一群害怕盖茨的书呆子住在租来的房子里，痴迷于近代流行文化，开着马自达 Miatas，工作非常努力，参加“股权分配派对”，而同事们则赚取巨额薪酬。科普兰笔下的主人公若有所思地说道：“这是一种诡异的科幻小说式的缺乏，没有任何人看起来不像 31.2 岁。这让人感到压抑。好像就在上周，整个 Campus 都经历了 Gap ribbed-T 狂热——而现在，他们都在 Kirkland 购买同一套 3 室 2 卫的灰白色公寓。” ¹⁰无论准确与否，这本书都证明了大众对该公司文化的迷恋。

In 1994 Douglas Copeland, a young novelist whose reputation lay as an observer of the latest cultural trends, published what became the opening of his novel Microserfs in Wired Magazine. His memorable portrait described Microsoft as a monoculture of alienated Gates-fearing nerds living in rented houses, obsessing over the pop culture of the recent past, driving Mazda Miatas, working enormously hard, and attending “vesting parties” as colleagues earned their enormous payouts. “There’s this eerie, science-fiction lack of anyone who doesn’t look exactly 31.2,” mused Copeland’s protagonist. “It’s oppressive. It seems like only last week the entire Campus went through Gap ribbed-T mania together—and now they’re all shopping for the same 3bdr/2bth dove-gray condo in Kirkland.”¹⁰ Accurate or not, the book testified to popular fascination with the firm’s culture.

在操作系统供应商中，Windows 击败了 IBM 和 Digital Research，而 Office 则挑战了曾经占据主导地位的 PC 应用程序提供商，如 Lotus、Ashton-Tate 和 Word Perfect。到 20 世纪 90 年代中期，微软的竞争对手已经集中在两个办公套件上：IBM 收购了 Lotus，并添加了一些鲜为人知的软件包来完善其捆绑产品，而图形软件专家 Corel 则推出了一个以 WordPerfect 为基础的套件。这两家公司都无法阻止用户稳步转向微软。IBM 于 1999 年发布了最后一个主要版本，尽管 Corel 一直在向日益减少的 WordPerfect 忠实用户提供更新。

Windows rolled over IBM and Digital Research among the operating system suppliers, while Office challenged once dominant PC application providers such as Lotus, Ashton-Tate, and Word Perfect. By the mid-1990s, opposition to Microsoft had consolidated in two rival office suites: IBM bought Lotus and added some lesser-known packages to round out its bundle, and graphics software specialist Corel anchored a suite with WordPerfect. Neither could stem the steady migration of users to Microsoft. IBM made its last major release in 1999, although Corel has continued to deliver updates to the dwindling band of die-hard users of WordPerfect.

新开发技术

New Development Technologies

技术的变化总是要求程序员学习新技术和新方法。在 20 世纪 90 年代，由于微软 Windows 成为行业主导平台，新开发工具和技术的更新换代尤为迅速。1998 年，软件开发人员 Ellen Ullman 写道，在她从事第一份编程工作后的 20 年里

Changing technology had always challenged programmers to learn new technologies and approaches. During the 1990s, driven in large part by the transition to Microsoft Windows as the industry’s dominant platform, the succession of new development tools and technologies was particularly rapid. In 1998, software developer Ellen Ullman wrote that in the two decades since taking her first programming job

我自学了六种高级编程语言、三种汇编语言、两种数据检索语言、八种作业处理语言、十七种脚本语言、十种宏、两种对象定义语言、六十八种编程库接口、五种网络和八种操作环境。……考虑到计算的变化速度，任何在计算领域工作过一段时间的人都可以列出这样的清单。…… UNIX 程序员过去常常嘲笑 COBOL 无人驾驶飞机年复一年地停留在企业大型机的荒原上。然后，就在去年，UNIX 变得过时了。Windows NT 现在是新的环境，是时候再次向前迈进了。不要安于现状，不要太依恋，不要结婚^。11

I have taught myself six higher level programming languages, three assemblers, two data-retrieval languages, eight job-processing languages, seventeen scripting languages, ten types of macros, two object-definition languages, sixty-eight programming-library interfaces, five varieties of networks and eight operating environments.… Given the rate of change in computing, anyone who’s been around for a while could probably make a list like this.… UNIX programmers used to scoff at COBOL drones stuck year by year in the wasteland of corporate mainframes. Then, just last year, UNIX became old-fashioned. Windows NT is now the new environment, and it’s time to move on again. Don’t get comfortable, don’t get too attached, don’t get married.¹¹

向 Windows 的转变与专业程序员向面向对象语言的转变有关。到 20 世纪 90 年代中期，面向对象已经从 Smalltalk 发展成为一个强大的营销口号，应用于操作系统及其用户界面的设计、数据库管理系统，以及将公司内部应用程序划分为通过网络通信的协作进程集群。

The shift toward Windows was associated with a transition among professional programmers toward object-oriented languages. By the mid-1990s object orientation had grown from its roots in Smalltalk into a powerful marketing slogan applied to the design of operating systems and their user interfaces, to database management systems, and to the partitioning of internal corporate applications into clusters of cooperating processes communicating over networks.

炒作的背后，变化更为渐进。最明显的变化是 C ++取代 C 成为重型个人计算机软件开发的首选语言。软件开发逐渐转向以对象形式访问的应用程序框架和库。到 20 世纪 90 年代初，C ++取代 Pascal 成为大学计算机科学教学中最常用的语言。

Behind the hype, change was more gradual. The most visible shift was that C++ replaced C as the preferred language for heavy-duty personal computer software development. Software development gradually shifted toward application frameworks and libraries accessed as objects. By the early 1990s, C++ was edging out Pascal as the most common language for computer science instruction in universities.

C ++功能强大，但和 C 一样，它让新手感到困惑，而且调试起来也很难。BASIC 仍然是 MS-DOS 的标准组成部分；事实上，微软在 1991 年的 DOS 5 中对其进行了重大升级。尽管它是当时使用最广泛的编程语言，但它从未受到计算机科学家的青睐。即使在 BASIC 的鼎盛时期，微型计算机软件的商业开发人员通常也会转向汇编语言，后来又转向 C，以从小型机器中榨取更快的速度和更多功能。很难想象还有一种语言比 BASIC 更适合开发 Windows 软件。

C++ was powerful, but like C it was baffling to novices and unforgiving to debug. BASIC remained a standard part of MS-DOS; in fact, Microsoft gave it a major upgrade with DOS 5 in 1991. Despite being the most the widely used programming language of the era, it was never favored by computer scientists. Even during the heyday of BASIC, commercial developers of microcomputer software had usually turned to assembly language, or later to C, to squeeze more speed and capabilities out of the little machines. A language less suitable for the development of Windows software was hard to imagine.

然而，多亏了 Windows，BASIC 才获得了令人惊讶的第二次生命。微软于 1991 年发布了 Visual Basic。它成为了 20 世纪 90 年代的 COBOL，在企业内部被广泛用于开发定制应用程序。这种成功与 BASIC 的内在优点关系不大，而很大程度上归功于其开发环境的便利性，该环境基于 Windows 编程系统，自由开发人员 Alan Cooper 于 1988 年将其卖给了微软。12^开发人员通过将界面元素（如滚动条、控制按钮和数据库字段）从托盘拖到屏幕上需要的位置来构建应用程序。一旦界面看起来正确，开发人员就会编写代码片段来指定单击按钮或更新文本框中的值时会发生什么。面向对象的框架使程序员能够以编程方式修改视觉元素并控制应用程序的其他方面（如下拉菜单）。集成开发环境使在程序运行时调试程序变得很容易。

Yet it was thanks to Windows that BASIC enjoyed a surprising second life. Microsoft released Visual Basic in 1991. It became the COBOL of the 1990s, widely used inside businesses to develop custom applications. That success owed little to the inherent merits of BASIC, and a great deal to the convenience of its development environment, which was based on a Windows programming system that Alan Cooper, a freelance developer, had sold to Microsoft back in 1988.¹² Developers constructed applications by dragging interface elements such as scroll bars, control buttons, and database fields from a pallet to the places on screen where they were needed. Once the interface looked right, developers wrote snippets of code to specify what would happen when a button was clicked or the value in a text box updated. An object-oriented framework gave programmers the ability to programmatically modify the visual elements and control other aspects of the application such as pull-down menus. An integrated development environment made it easy to debug the program as it ran.

微软甚至将 Visual Basic 内置到其核心 Office 应用程序中。这样一来，每个 Office 用户都可以访问编程系统，并大大增强了开发人员的能力。例如，用微软的 Access 数据库程序编写的数据库应用程序可以合并代码来导出数据、启动 Word、调用 Word 的邮件合并功能以将数据插入到格式信函中，然后传真、发送电子邮件或打印信件。

Microsoft even built Visual Basic into its core Office applications. That gave every user of Office access to a programming system, and multiplied the power of developers. For example, a database application written in Microsoft’s Access database program could incorporate code to export data, launch Word, invoke Word’s mail merge function to insert the data into a form letter, and then fax, email, or print the letters.

个人计算机系统日益复杂，这也带来了新的安全问题。计算机病毒是可自我复制的代码片段，它们会附着于其他文件并感染自身。（通过网络传播的自包含恶意程序从技术上讲是蠕虫，尽管它们也经常被称为病毒。）第一种影响个人计算机的病毒出现在 20 世纪 80 年代中期。它们通过感染计算机从软盘启动时运行的代码进行传播。这催生了用于扫描感染的防病毒软件市场。通过在其 Office 应用程序中构建编程功能，微软开辟了新的感染媒介，因为隐藏在 Word 文档中的代码可以控制计算机复制或删除文件并感染其他文档。一旦计算机连接到互联网，病毒就会开始自动发送受感染的电子邮件。有些病毒传播迅速，感染了数百万台计算机。

The increasing complexity of personal computer systems opened up new security issues. Computer viruses are self-replicating pieces of code that attach themselves to infect other files. (Self-contained malicious programs spread over networks are technically worms, although they too were often called viruses.) The first viruses to affect PCs were created in the mid-1980s. They spread by infecting the code run when a computer was booted from a floppy disk. This created a market for antivirus software to scan for infections. By building programming facilities into its Office applications, Microsoft opened up new vectors for infection, as code hidden in a Word document could take command of a computer to copy or erase files and to infect other documents. Once computers were connected to the Internet, viruses began to automatically dispatch infected emails. Some spread rapidly to infect millions of computers.

微软的操作系统、编程工具、开发环境和对象框架的组合可能会很强大，如果微软希望的话，开发人员完全致力于使用 Microsoft 的工具、操作系统和数据库管理系统。其工具最终被捆绑并集成为 Visual Studio 套件。它们协同工作顺畅，Microsoft 也为开发人员提供了良好的支持。正如 Ullman 所描述的那样，“CD-ROM 的泛滥仍在继续。每季度、每季度、每月，无论什么…… UPS 都会带着一堆新磁盘出现在我家门口。1234567890-新版本的操作系统、数据库软件、开发人员库、开发工具、设备驱动程序工具包——您需要了解的一切，才能跟上 Microsoft 的步伐。” ¹³

Microsoft’s combination of operating systems, programming tools, development environments, and object frameworks could be powerful if, as Microsoft wanted, developers committed entirely to Microsoft tools, operating systems, and database management systems. Its tools were eventually bundled and integrated as the Visual Studio suite. They worked smoothly together, and Microsoft supported developers well. As Ullman described it, “an inundation of CD-ROMs continues. Quarterly, seasonally, monthly, whatever … UPS shows up at my door with a new stack of disks. 1234567890-New versions of operating systems, database software, developer libraries, development tools, device driver kits—everything you need to know to keep pace with Microsoft.”¹³

关系数据库管理系统

Relational Database Management Systems

到 20 世纪 90 年代中期，定制 PC 应用程序开始使用一种新型数据库管理系统进行创建，这种系统不是基于从 CP/M 微型计算机时代继承下来的简单 dBASE 技术，而是基于计算研究实验室中构建的复杂小型计算机系统。20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代初期的领先数据库管理系统运行在大型机上，设计用于在硬件成本极高的时代为常规流程提供极高的吞吐量。正如我们之前所解释的那样，大多数系统使用了后来被称为数据组织网络模型的方法，也称为 CODASYL 方法。

By the mid-1990s custom PC applications were being created using a new class of database management systems, based not on the simple dBASE technology inherited from the days of CP/M microcomputers but on complex minicomputer systems built in computing research laboratories. The leading database management systems of the 1970s and early 1980s were run on mainframes and designed for very high throughput for routine processes during an era of extremely high hardware costs. As we explained previously, most used what was later called the network model of data organization, also known as the CODASYL approach.

到 20 世纪 80 年代末，软件行业的焦点转向了一种基于关系数据组织模型的新型数据库管理系统。关系方法由 IBM 研究员 Edgar F. Codd 在其 1970 年的论文《大型共享数据库的关系数据模型》中定义。14 ^Codd因该模型获得了图灵奖，该模型以简单且概念优雅的方式组织数据。其主要优势是灵活性：每次检索数据时都会指定不同数据表之间的连接（例如，客户、订单和产品之间的连接），而不是在创建表时指定并将其硬编码到数据存储在磁盘上的方式中。其主要缺点是实施复杂性：找出一种有效的方式来执行用户碰巧输入的任何查询要比遵循固定路径复杂得多。

By the late 1980s, excitement in the software industry had shifted to a new kind of database management system based on the relational model of data organization. The relational approach was defined by IBM researcher Edgar F. Codd in his 1970 paper “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Databanks.”¹⁴ Codd won a Turing award for this model, which organized data in a simple and conceptually elegant way. Its key advantage was flexibility: the connections between different data tables (for example, between customers, orders, and products) were specified each time data was retrieved, rather than specified when the tables were created and hard coded into the way the data was stored on disk. Its primary disadvantage was implementational complexity: figuring out an efficient way to execute any query the user happened to enter was far more complicated than following fixed paths.

两个研究原型证明了关系方法是可行的。IBM 的 System R 在大型机上实现了软件工程的壮举。它在 1978-9 年进行的现场测试为新方法提供了有力的证据。15^由于IBM 及其客户在现有系统上投入了巨额资金，它最初销售的是商业版本 SQL/DSS（DSS 代表决策支持系统），用于分析查询而不是常规流程。直到 20 世纪 90 年代，当它更名为 DB/2（数据库 2）时，IBM 才将关系技术定位为其早期大型机数据库软件的替代品^。16

Two research prototypes proved the relational approach was viable. IBM’s System R, on a large mainframe, was a feat of software engineering. Its field tests in 1978–9 made a strong case for the new approach.¹⁵ Because of the huge investment IBM and its customers had made in existing systems, it initially marketed the commercial version, SQL/DSS (DSS stood for decision support system) to use for analytical querying rather than routine processes. Only in the 1990s, when it was rebranded DB/2 (data base 2) did IBM position relational technology as a replacement for its earlier mainframe database software.¹⁶

另一个早期实施产生了更大的初始影响。CODASYL 风格的系统在 DEC 机器或其他基于 Unix 的小型计算机上尚未得到广泛使用。加州大学伯克利分校的 Michael Stonebraker 在 20 世纪 70 年代中期领导开发了一款名为 INGRES 的基于 Unix 的强大关系数据库管理系统。大部分开发工作是由研究生完成的，他们将自己的经验（在许多情况下，还有代码本身）带到了一批开发数据库管理系统的初创公司。Sybase 就是其中之一，其系统最终由微软授权为 SQL Server，供 Windows NT 使用。17^另一家公司 Relational Technology 由 Stonebraker 于 1980 年创立，旨在将 INGRES 商业化。18 Oracle 几年后才成立，但到 20 世纪 80 年代末就已领先市场。这在很大程度上要归功于其创始人 Larry Ellison 树立的积极销售文化。19到²⁰世纪末，它已经将其他商业数据库管理系统生产商边缘化，并与同为软件生产商的微软和 SAP 一起成为全球最大和最有价值的公司之一。

The other early implementation had a greater initial impact. CODASYL-style systems had not been as widely used on DEC machines or other Unix-based minicomputers. Michael Stonebraker of the University of California at Berkeley led the development during the mid-1970s of a robust Unix-based relational database management system called INGRES. Much of the development work was done by graduate students, who took their experience (and in many cases, the code itself) to a cluster of start-up companies producing database management systems. One was Sybase, whose system was eventually licensed by Microsoft as SQL Server, for use with Windows NT.¹⁷ Another firm, Relational Technology, was founded in 1980 by Stonebraker himself to commercialize INGRES.¹⁸ Oracle started a few years later, but was leading the market by the end of the 1980s. That owed a lot to its aggressive sales culture, set by its founder Larry Ellison.¹⁹ By the end of the century it had marginalized other producers of commercial database management systems and was entrenched, along with fellow software producers Microsoft and SAP, as one of the world’s largest and most valuable companies.

客户端服务器应用程序

Client Server Applications

Oracle 历史上最重要的里程碑也许是 1992 年发布的数据库管理系统 7.0 版。它利用了人们对客户端服务器应用程序日益增长的兴趣。20在 20 世纪 90 年代末的计算机行业中，很少有比客户端服务器更难摆脱的流行语了^，它的起源在施乐 PARC，我们在上一章中讨论了它。Windows PC 新获得的图形用户界面和网络功能使它们成为围绕企业数据库构建的应用程序的明显接口点。

Perhaps the most important milestone in Oracle’s history was the release in 1992 of version 7.0 of its database management system. It capitalized on booming interest in client server applications.²⁰ Few buzzwords were harder to escape in the computer industry of the late 1990s than client server, whose origins at Xerox PARC were discussed in the previous chapter. The newly acquired graphical user interface and networking capabilities of Windows PCs made them the obvious interface points for applications built around corporate databases.

在商业计算领域，客户端服务器开发尤其与在个人计算机上运行的定制企业应用程序相关，这些应用程序将数据存储在服务器上运行的关系数据库管理系统中。这结合了个人计算和传统分时系统的最佳功能。与使用终端仿真器登录大型机或小型计算机以使用基于文本的应用程序相比，Windows 应用程序更易于使用且更方便。围绕数据库管理系统（而不是文件存储）构建应用程序，可以更轻松地备份和保护数据，并让应用程序集中数据。它还允许开发人员将规则编码到 DBMS 中以验证对存储数据的更改。

In the business computing world, client server development was associated particularly with custom corporate applications running on personal computers that stored their data in a relational database management system running on a server. This combined the best features of personal computing and traditional timesharing systems. Windows applications were easier to use and more convenient than grappling with a terminal emulator to log into a mainframe or minicomputer to use a text-based application. Building the application around a database management system, rather than file storage, made it easier to back up and secure the data and to let applications pool their data. It also allows developers to code rules into the DBMS to validate changes to stored data.

实际上，要让客户端服务器正常工作，需要将不成熟且快速变化的技术整合在一起。Ullman 描述了 IT 工作中的一个典型时刻——尝试配置一个系统。三个人都是生产该系统的公司前员工，他们因为无法按规定工作而困惑了好几个小时。

Making client server work in practice required coaxing immature and rapidly changing technologies to function together. Ullman described a typical moment in IT work—trying to configure a system. Three people, all former employees of the company that produced it, were stumped for hours by its refusal to work as specified.

一瞬间，我感到内疚。每小时跑三米，专家很贵。我们应该知道这一点，我想。我想象着其他更好的专家可以更快地完成这项工作。但内疚感过去了。我做这件事已经够久了，我知道，尽管我们很可怜，但我们就是它。我们三个人努力在新的操作系统上运行这个数据库，翻阅不完整的文档，使用试错法设置选项——这就是我们业务中的专业知识^。21

For a moment: guilt. Three meters running by the hour: experts are expensive. We should know this, I thought. I imagined other, better experts who could do the job more quickly. But the guilt passed. I’d been doing this long enough to know that, pitiful as we were, we were it. The three of us struggling through the running of this database on a new operating system, flipping through incomplete documentation, using trial-and-error settings of options—this was what passed for expertise in our business.²¹

几十年来，各家公司一直在逐步实现计算机化，每次只实现一个职能或部门的计算机化。结果就是系统和技术杂乱无章，有些是公司内部开发的，有些是从软件公司购买的。要完成任何工作，就需要编写程序将数据从一个系统传输到另一个系统。根据 1996 年的一篇文章《集成噩梦》，“这些链接通常是根据当时的需要临时拼凑起来的——系统架构采用的是口香糖和打包线的方法”，结果就是“一张错综复杂的定制连接网，每次系统发生变化时都必须拆开重建”。据估计，公司 IT 部门程序员的“35% 到 40%”的时间都花在保持文件和数据库中的数据一致性上。这可能会阻碍公司改变经营方式、升级系统或探索新的机会^。22

Companies had computerized themselves over decades, one function or department at a time. The result was a messy patchwork of systems and technologies, some produced internally and others purchased from software companies. Getting anything done meant writing programs to transfer data from one system to another. According to a 1996 article, “The Integration Nightmare,” “Those links are usually cobbled together ad hoc in response to the needs of the moment—the chewing gum and bailing wire approach to systems architecture,” yielding “a tangled web of customized connections that must be torn apart and rebuilt each time the system is changed.” An estimated “35 to 40 percent” of programmer time in corporate IT departments was spent keeping data in files and databases consistent. This could deter companies from changing the way they did business, upgrading their systems, or exploring new opportunities.²²

企业软件包可以用一个单一的、预先集成的系统取代这一混乱局面，该系统包含几乎任何可以想象到的需求的模块。SAP，我们在第 3 章中讨论过的综合管理软件公司，占据了这个市场的最大份额。到 20 世纪 90 年代，越来越多的大公司开始抛弃他们为工资单、会计和生产调度等业务流程定制或单一用途的软件包。随着公司签订数千万或数亿美元的合同来处理大规模的转换工作，IT 服务行业蓬勃发展。

Enterprise software packages could replace this mess with a single, pre-integrated system with modules for almost any conceivable need. SAP, the integrated administrative software company we discussed in chapter 3, took the lion’s share of this market. By the 1990s, more and more large companies were throwing out their custom-written or single-purpose packages for business processes like payroll, accounting, and production scheduling. The IT services industry boomed as firms signed contracts for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to handle the massive conversion efforts.

这种增长得益于从大型机到 PC 网络的技术转变。这些新客户没有采用原来的集中式大型机模型，而是纷纷转向使用三层模型的 SAP R/3（于 1992 年推出）。在最常见的配置中，用户使用在台式计算机上运行的 Windows 客户端程序。这与 SAP业务逻辑进行通信，后者通常托管在强大的 Unix 服务器上。第三层是数据库管理软件，通常是 Oracle，用于保存支撑公司运营的庞大集成数据库。

This growth was made possible by a technological shift from mainframes to PC networks. Rather than adopting the original centralized mainframe model, these new customers were flocking to SAP R/3 (introduced in 1992), which used a three tier model. In the most common configuration, users worked with Windows client programs running on a desktop computer. This communicated with the SAP business logic, typically hosted on a powerful Unix server. The third tier was the database management software, typically Oracle, used to hold the massive integrated database that underpinned the firm’s operations.

IBM 之后的 PC 标准

The PC Standard after IBM

20 世纪 80 年代末和 90 年代，个人电脑行业的常态是小步前进，大步前进。如果一家韩国公司推出的新型显卡比某家个人电脑制造商目前在其机器中采用的台湾型号快 20%，便宜 10%，那么没有理由不订购几千份以满足未来几个月的生产需求。这两款显卡都符合 IBM 设定的标准，大多数客户根本不会注意到其中的差别。

The norm for the PC industry during the late 1980s and 1990s was to make rapid progress in tiny increments. If a Korean firm offered a new video card 20 percent faster and 10 percent cheaper than the Taiwanese model that a PC maker was currently screwing into its machines, then there was no reason not to order a few thousand copies to cover the next couple of months of production. Both cards would be compatible with the standard set by IBM, and most customers would never notice the difference.

Windows 的出现暴露了这种方法的局限性。即使在 1990 年最强大的 PC 上，Windows 3.0 也运行缓慢、容易崩溃，而且总体上笨重。但它的快速普及推动了 PC 硬件和软件的根本性变革，并在 20 世纪 90 年代中期重塑了 PC 和 PC 行业。

The arrival of Windows exposed the limitations of this approach. Even on the most powerful PC money could buy in 1990, Windows 3.0 was slow, prone to crashing, and generally clunky. But its rapid adoption spurred fundamental changes to PC hardware and software, which remade both the PC and the PC industry during the mid-1990s.

极度分散化使得采用改进的组件变得容易，但指导整个平台却变得更加困难。PC 不是由其任何组件定义的。它是由连接它们的连接器定义的。所有这些部件能够组合在一起的唯一方法是每个部件都遵循原始 PC AT 的设计。从更根本的角度改进 PC 需要各公司共同努力，就新的连接器达成一致。

The extreme decentralization that made it easy to adopt improved components made it much harder to direct the platform as a whole. The PC wasn’t defined by any of its components. It was defined by the connectors that joined them together. The only way that all those parts could fit together is if each followed the design of the original PC AT. Improving the PC in more fundamental ways required firms to work together to agree on new connectors.

之前有过这样的先例，当时 IBM 未参与合作，试图扩大 PC 的最大内存容量。电子表格用户正在构建更大的模型，但内存不足以容纳它们。新的更高容量的 RAM 芯片使在 PC 中塞入更多内存成为可能。但 PC 的原始设计规定了 640 KB 的内存限制。1985 年，Lotus、Intel 和 Microsoft 联合宣布了一项扩展内存的联合标准，以便硬件供应商可以生产更高容量的附加板。它依赖于分页技术，将块从更大的内存池切换到处理器可访问的地址范围。

There was a precedent for this, in a collaborative effort to expand the maximum memory capacity of PC without the involvement of IBM. Spreadsheet users were building larger models and running out of RAM to hold them. New, higher capacity RAM chips made it feasible to squeeze more memory into a PC. But the PC’s original design imposed a 640 KB memory limit. In 1985 Lotus, Intel, and Microsoft had jointly announced a joint standard for expanded memory so that hardware suppliers could produce higher capacity add-in boards. It relied on a paging technology, switching blocks from the larger memory pool into the address range accessible by the processor.

在 IBM 转向 PS/2 导致 PC 被淘汰后，这些合作努力成为推进其架构的唯一途径。IBM PC AT 使用复杂的硬盘控制器。这设定了一个事实上的标准（称为 ST-506），许多公司开始生产更好、更便宜的兼容驱动器和控制器。然而，到 20 世纪 80 年代末，PC 克隆产品开始转向新的集成驱动器电子 (IDE) 连接器，该连接器将控制电子设备放在驱动器本身上。这降低了成本，提高了性能，并支持更高的存储容量。驱动器制造商与主板生产商（以及为其提供芯片组和 BIOS 组件的生产商）、计算机组装商，当然还有 Microsoft 合作，以纳入必要的更改。

After IBM’s shift to PS/2 orphaned the PC, these collaborative efforts became the only way to advance its architecture. The IBM PC AT used a complex hard disk controller. This set a de facto standard (known as ST-506), and many firms began to produce better and cheaper compatible drives and controllers. However, by the end of the 1980s, PC clones were shifting to the new integrated drive electronics (IDE) connector, which put the control electronics on the drive itself. This lowered costs, improved performance, and supported much higher storage capacities. Drive manufacturers cooperated with motherboard producers (and the producers of chipset and BIOS components who supplied them), computer assemblers, and of course Microsoft to incorporate the necessary changes.

PC 制造商面临的最大挑战是 IBM 的新微通道架构。要保持标准 PC 架构的活力，最终需要它们具备与其相匹配的能力。为此，由 EISA 联盟组织的第一个努力是Compaq 标志着 PC 行业的新动态。该小组设计了一种改进但向后兼容的 AT 扩展总线版本（它也对其进行了标准化），称为增强型行业标准架构 (EISA)。EISA 仍然很少见，主要用于将高性能磁盘驱动器和网卡连接到服务器，但它标志着 PC 行业决心独立于 IBM 发展其平台^。23

The biggest challenge facing PC producers was IBM’s new micro channel architecture. Keeping the standard PC architecture alive would eventually require them to match its capabilities. The first effort to do this, the EISA consortium assembled by Compaq, signaled the new dynamics of the PC industry. The group designed an improved but backwardly compatible version of the AT expansion bus (which it also standardized) to be called the enhanced industry standard architecture (EISA). EISA remained rare, used mostly to connect high-performance disk drives and network cards to servers, but it signaled the determination of the PC industry to evolve its platform independently of IBM.²³

另一个行业联盟，视频电子标准协会 (VESA)，成立于 1989 年。数十家公司生产的低价显卡几乎与 IBM 自己的 VGA 图形芯片完全兼容，该芯片提供 16 种颜色的 640 × 480 像素分辨率。他们联合起来，就更高分辨率模式和更多颜色的标准达成一致，包括 Windows 3 的许多用户所依赖的广泛使用的超级 VGA (SVGA) 模式。将 VGA 重新定义为开放标准，而不是模仿过时的 IBM 设计，这使得显示器和显卡制造商在 20 世纪 90 年代大大提高了分辨率。IBM 放弃的 PC 标准开始看起来具有独立的未来。没有一家公司可以指望主导变革，但临时组织开始负责平台的不同部分并就其连接标准达成一致。如今，VESA 以另一项重要的标准化行动而闻名：修复平板电视背面的安装孔。

Another industry consortium, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), was set up in 1989. Dozens of companies were producing low-priced cards almost perfectly compatible with IBM’s own VGA graphics chips, which offered resolutions of 640×480 pixels in sixteen colors. Banding together, they agreed on standards for higher resolution modes with more colors, including the widely used super VGA (SVGA) mode relied upon by many users of Windows 3. Redefining VGA as an open standard rather than the imitation of an obsolete IBM design allowed the creators of monitors and graphics cards markers to greatly improve their resolutions during the 1990s. The PC standard abandoned by IBM was beginning to look like something with an independent future. No single company could hope to dictate changes, but ad hoc groups were beginning to take charge of different parts of the platform and agree on standards for their connections. Today, VESA is best known for another important act of standardization: fixing the mounting holes on the back of flat screen televisions.

Windows 暴露的其他弱点需要进行更根本的变革。其中一个问题是现有图形硬件重绘屏幕的速度非常慢。PC 的模块化特性既是祸害也是福音。想象一下，有人在 Windows 3.0 推出时购买了一台运行速度很快的新 PC。她可以在眨眼间重新计算复杂的电子表格，但看到 Word for Windows 滚动文档的速度如此之慢，以至于屏幕从上到下明显出现波纹，她会感到沮丧。每次单击滚动箭头时，处理器都必须通过 1984 年为 PC AT 设计的低容量连接器将窗口的所有内容重新导入显卡。

Other weaknesses exposed by Windows required more fundamental changes. One problem was the woefully slow rate at which existing graphics hardware could redraw the screen. The modular nature of the PC was a curse as well as a blessing. Imagine someone who purchased a fast new PC to run Windows 3.0 when it was launched. She could recalculate complex spreadsheets in the blink of an eye, but would be frustrated to see Word for Windows scroll through a document so slowly that the screen visibly rippled from top to bottom. With each click of the scroll arrow, the processor had to funnel the entire contents of the window back into the graphics card though a low-capacity connector designed in 1984 for the PC AT.

显卡生产商将提高 Windows 性能作为首要任务。1991 年，新兴硬件公司 S3 发布了 911 显卡芯片，这是首款专门设计为 Windows加速器的广泛使用的硬件。显卡上的专用处理器处理绘制直线或滚动窗口所需的繁重工作，从而减少了通过连接器瓶颈传输的数据量。Windows 令人痛苦的缓慢图形性能也促使业界强烈要求消除瓶颈本身。这需要包括主板、扩展卡和控制插槽的芯片组制造商在内的公司进行协调变革。VESA 联盟在 VGA 的基础上，推出了更快的显卡连接器，从而提高了性能非常引人注目。它与旧插槽的高度和间距相匹配，因此可以与现有的机箱配合使用^。24

Graphics board producers made better Windows performance their top priority. In 1991, the 911 graphics chip, the first widely used hardware designed specifically as a windows accelerator, was announced by fledgling hardware firm S3. A specialized processor on the graphics card handled the grunt work required to draw straight lines or scroll a window, reducing the amount of data being pushed through the connector bottleneck. The agonizingly slow graphics performance of Windows also gave the industry a strong motivation to remove the bottleneck itself. That took coordinated changes by companies including the makers of motherboards, of expansion cards, and of the chipsets that controlled the slots. The VESA consortium followed up its work on VGA with a faster connector for graphics cards, which improved performance spectacularly. It matched the height and spacing of the old slots and therefore worked with existing cases.²⁴

英特尔占据主导地位

Intel Takes Charge

在从原始 PC AT 继承的所有特性中，最难改变的是机箱设计，如果一家公司控制了 PC 标准，那么修改起来就很容易了。20 世纪 90 年代早期 PC 的机箱和主板由不同的公司生产。十年后，这种设计让 PC 看起来笨重不堪，因为功能更强大的工作站竞争对手都缩小到了时髦的“披萨盒”机箱中。主板不能缩小太多，因为它必须达到原始 IBM 主板使用的安装孔，并将其扩展槽和键盘连接器与机箱上的切口对齐。这使得机箱变宽。扩展卡遵循 1981 年原始 PC 设定的尺寸。这使得机箱变高。电源占据了右后角，就像 IBM 原版一样，一个位置不方便的开关从另一个标准孔中伸出。即使是 20 世纪 90 年代初流行的迷你塔式机箱也只是缩短了传统台式机机箱并将其侧放。

Of all the features inherited from the original PC AT, the hardest to change was something that would have been trivial to modify if a single company had controlled the PC standard: the case design. The case and motherboard of an early 1990s PC were produced by different companies. A decade later, this design was making PCs look clunky, as much more powerful workstation rivals shrank into fashionable “pizza box” cases. The motherboard couldn’t shrink too much as it had to reach the mounting holes used by the original IBM board and align its expansion slots and keyboard connector with the cutouts in the case. That made the case wide. Expansion cards followed the dimensions set by the original PC in 1981. That made the case high. The power supply occupied the right rear corner, as in the IBM original, with an inconveniently located switch protruding through another standard hole. Even the mini-tower format that became popular in the early 1990s just shortened the traditional desktop case and turned it sideways.

这些限制不仅仅是美观上的。它们损害了 PC 生产商利用新芯片技术的能力。图形、网络和声音控制器很少集成到 PC 主板上，就像 Macintosh 和工作站计算机一样。为什么？不是因为任何技术限制，而只是因为标准机箱没有提供用于插入主板安装的额外连接器的孔。无法模拟孔以实现向后兼容或将其作为不同模式包含在内。它要么存在，要么不存在。

The constraints were more than just aesthetic. They hurt the ability of PC producers to exploit new chip technology. Graphics, network, and sound controllers were rarely integrated onto PC motherboards, as they were on Macintosh and workstation computers. Why? Not because of any technological limitation, but simply because standard cases provided no holes for additional motherboard-mounted connectors to poke through. A hole cannot be emulated for backward compatibility or included as a different mode. It is either there or it is not.

20 世纪 80 年代，英特尔让其他公司设计与其处理器配套的主板，并制造所有重要的支持芯片（芯片组），这些芯片组负责处理与内存芯片和扩展卡接口等任务。随着 1993 年奔腾处理器的推出，这种情况发生了变化（我们将在本章后面讨论）。新处理器与高速扩展槽 PCI 配对，后者也是由英特尔设计的。PCI 最初用于显卡，它最迫切需要额外的带宽，但随着它的使用扩展到网络和声卡等其他组件，它逐渐取代了从 PC AT 继承下来的旧式插槽。

In the 1980s Intel had left other firms to design the motherboard used with its processors, and to create all-important support chips (chipsets) that handled tasks such as interfacing with memory chips and expansion cards. This changed with the launch of its Pentium processor in 1993 (to which we return subsequently in this chapter). The new processor was paired with high-speed expansion slots, PCI, also designed by Intel. PCI was first used for graphics cards, which most urgently required the additional bandwidth, but as its use spread to other components such as network and sound cards, it gradually replaced the old-style slots inherited from the PC AT.

英特尔开始销售整块主板，利用其对 PC 设计的日益控制，成为其他主板生产商的芯片组主要供应商。到 1996 年，它已经有能力提出一种新的标准格式，并让主板和机箱生产商也加入进来。英特尔于 1996 年推出 ATX 主板格式，标志着 PC 标准中最后一个直接源自实际 IBM 机器的重要元素的消失。ATX 修改了机箱设计、电源连接和系统板布局设计。它增加了一个大机箱开口，可以容纳许多新主板本身的插槽。这样，声音和网络功能就可以由英特尔芯片组提供，无需单独的卡。

Intel began to sell entire motherboards, leveraging its increasing control of PC designs to become the leading supplier of chipsets to other motherboard producers. By 1996, it had the clout to propose a new standard format and have the producers of motherboards and cases go along. Intel’s introduction of the ATX motherboard format in 1996 marked the disappearance of the last significant element of the PC standard to be derived directly from an actual IBM machine. ATX revised the case design, power supply connections, and system board layout design. It added a large case opening, with room for lots of new sockets on the motherboard itself. Sound and networking capabilities could then be provided by the Intel chipsets, eliminating the need for separate cards.

1998 年，英特尔尝试销售显卡。虽然失败了，但第二年它开始将图形功能融入到卖给主板制造商的芯片组中。这一举措效果显著，摧毁了大多数笔记本电脑和廉价台式电脑的独立显卡市场。消费者为 PC 支付的费用减少了，但更多的钱流向了英特尔。

In 1998, Intel tried selling graphics cards. That failed, but the following year it began building graphics capabilities into the chipsets it was selling to motherboard makers. This worked well enough to kill the market for separate graphics cards on most laptops and on cheaper desktop computers. Customers paid less for their PCs, but more of the money went to Intel.

到 20 世纪 90 年代末，英特尔几乎完全控制了 PC 硬件平台的发展，就像 IBM 在 20 世纪 80 年代中期控制 PC 硬件平台一样。英特尔利用其新的主导地位，通过将通用串行总线 (USB) 等新技术嵌入其芯片组，加速了这些技术的采用。USB 为计算机用户带来了福音，它用一个紧凑而灵活的插槽取代了扫描仪、打印机、键盘、鼠标和外部磁盘驱动器等外围设备的定制连接器和控制器。英特尔利用同样的权力阻碍了其他技术的采用，例如高速 IEEE 1394（FireWire）外围设备连接。

By the end of the decade, Intel controlled the evolution of the PC hardware platform almost as completely as IBM had controlled it in the mid-1980s. Intel used its new dominance to speed the adoption of some new technologies, such as the universal serial bus (USB), by building them into its chipsets. USB was a boon to computer users, replacing custom connectors and controllers for peripherals such as scanners, printers, keyboards, mice, and external disk drives with a single compact and flexible socket. Intel used the same power to derail the adoption of other technologies, such as high-speed IEEE 1394 (FireWire) peripheral connections.

图形笔记本电脑

Graphical Laptops

对于笔记本电脑用户来说，向 Windows 的过渡是一个挑战。Windows 机器需要更多内存、更多硬盘存储空间和响应迅速的高分辨率彩色屏幕。1990 年，这些要求使大多数台式电脑不堪重负，并使原本可以完美运行 DOS 的笔记本电脑不堪重负。

The transition to Windows was challenging for laptop users. A Windows machine needed more memory, more hard disk storage, and responsive high-resolution color screens. In 1990 those requirements strained most of the available desktop computers and overwhelmed laptops that had been perfectly usable with DOS.

然而，几年之内，硬件就已飞跃发展，在一个便于携带的七磅重的包里提供了功能强大的 Windows 电脑的全部功能。这得益于更大的小型化和集成度。将越来越多的功能集成到少数支持芯片上对台式电脑很有帮助，因为台式电脑可以使用更小的主板和更少的扩展槽。对于笔记本电脑来说，小巧、轻便和节能是必不可少的。笔记本电脑只能容纳一两个信用卡大小的小型附加设备，例如以太网适配器。强大的图形、声音、网络端口、蓝牙无线和红外数据传输等功能都必须集成到比台式电脑小得多的主板上。

Within a few years, however, hardware had jumped forward to provide the full power of a capable Windows computer in a briefcase-friendly seven-pound package. That was made possible by greater miniaturization and integration. Integrating ever more functions onto a handful of support chips was helpful for desktop computers, which could be produced with smaller motherboards and fewer expansion slots. For laptops it was essential to be small, light, and power efficient. Laptops could accommodate just one or two small, credit card-sized add-ons, such as Ethernet adapters. Features like powerful graphics, sound, networking ports, Bluetooth wireless, and infrared data transfer all had to be integrated onto a motherboard far smaller than that of a desktop computer.

例如，到 1996 年，咨询和会计公司普华永道为其疲惫不堪的员工配备了东芝 Satellite Pro 420CDT 型号的电脑，该型号拥有 11 英寸彩色屏幕，分辨率为 800 × 600，集成声音和 CD-ROM 驱动器，内置指点杆可替代鼠标，锂离子电池可使用三个小时，并配有全套端口，当顾问回到办公室时可连接全尺寸屏幕、键盘或打印机。苹果的 PowerBook 系列（图 10.3）将 Macintosh 打包成同样精美的格式，键盘下方配有轨迹球。

By 1996, for example, consulting and accounting firm Price Waterhouse was issuing its road-weary employees Toshiba’s Satellite Pro 420CDT models boasting an 11-inch color screen with an 800×600 resolution, integrated sound and CD-ROM drive, a built-in pointing stick to substitute for a mouse, a lithium-ion battery able to power three hours of use, and a full array of ports to connect full-sized screens, keyboards, or printers when the consultants were back in the office. Apple’s line of PowerBooks (figure 10.3) packed the Macintosh into a similarly attractive format, complete with a trackball underneath the keyboard.

IBM 于 1992 年推出的 ThinkPad 系列笔记本电脑成功挑战了东芝在企业市场上的份额。它们合上时是简单的黑色盒子，打开后露出大屏幕和醒目的色彩，包括一根红色的指点杆。早期型号上最引人注目的设计元素是蝴蝶键盘，当屏幕升起时，它可展开至整个宽度。当屏幕变大意味着键盘不再决定折叠笔记本电脑的宽度时，这种方法就被淘汰了。

IBM’s ThinkPad line of laptops, introduced in 1992, successfully challenged Toshiba for the corporate market. Simple black boxes when closed, they opened to reveal big screens and striking splashes of color, including a red pointing stick. The most striking design element on one early model was the butterfly keyboard, which unfolded to its full width when the screen was raised. That approach was retired when bigger screens meant that the keyboard no longer determined the width of a folded laptop.

从 20 世纪 90 年代中期到 21 世纪中期，笔记本电脑发展迅速，但进展缓慢。显示屏越来越薄、越来越亮，电池寿命越来越长，内置功能也越来越丰富。但仍需要做出权衡——制造商通常会为喜欢便携性的用户提供轻薄且不带内置光盘的笔记本电脑，为主流用户提供主流笔记本电脑，并为愿意携带更多重量的用户提供更大、更重、功能更强大的台式机替代品。这些数量上的变化最终导致了种类上的变化。随着选择笔记本电脑而非台式机的溢价缩减，随着性能差距的缩小，笔记本电脑从针对旅行专业人士的奢侈产品转变为不愿意重新布置家具来容纳笨重的台式电脑的家庭用户的默认购买产品。

From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, laptops advanced rapidly but incrementally. Displays grew thinner and brighter, battery life longer, and built-in features more extensive. There were still trade-offs to be made—manufacturers typically had a slim and light range without built-in optical disks for users favoring portability, a mainstream range, and a larger, heavier, and more capable desktop-replacement range for those willing to carry extra weight. These changes in quantity eventually added up to a change in kind. As the premium paid for choosing a laptop over a desktop shrank and the performance gap narrowed, laptops shifted from luxury products for traveling professionals to the default purchase for home users unwilling to rearrange furniture to accommodate a bulky desktop PC.

RISC 的起源

Origins of RISC

要理解这一挑战，我们必须回到 20 世纪 80 年代早期，当时 RISC 设计理念正在发展。第一批商业生产的电子计算机具有非常简单的指令集，因此需要许多指令才能完成任何事情。随着每一代新产品的推出，设计人员通过添加更复杂的寻址模式和指令格式，使单个指令更加强大。当每条指令完成更多任务时，任何给定的程序都可以用更少的指令编写。这节省了内存空间，降低了编译器的复杂性，并使汇编语言编程不再那么乏味。DEC 的 VAX 设计于 20 世纪 70 年代中期，是一个典型的例子。VAX 为其程序员提供了 250 多条指令，以几乎所有可以想象的方式处理数据。有针对整数、浮点数、压缩十进制数和字符串的指令，以多种模式运行。25^即使是简单的加法也可以指定三个寄存器或主内存位置的任意组合（两个用于要添加的数字的源和一个用于存储结果的目标）。它提供了一条浮点指令，使用系数表来计算多项式的值。自 20 世纪 60 年代以来，处理器使用微代码实现复杂指令已成为一种常见做法。当程序员要求 VAX 计算多项式的值时，这会触发一系列更简单的内部步骤。26^最重要的是，复杂的指令集应该使计算机运行得更快，部分原因是减少了计算机获取和解码新命令的次数。

To understand that challenge, we must move back in time to the early 1980s when the RISC design philosophy was being developed. The first commercially produced electronic computers had very simple instruction sets, so it took many instructions to accomplish anything. With each new generation, designers made individual instructions more powerful by adding more complex addressing modes and instruction formats. When each instruction accomplished more, any given program could be written in fewer instructions. This saved memory space, reduced the complexity of compilers, and made assembly language programming less tedious. DEC’s VAX, designed in the mid-1970s, provides a classic example. The VAX presented its programmers with more than 250 instructions to manipulate data in almost every conceivable way. There were instructions for integers, floating-point numbers, packed decimal numbers, and character strings, operating in a variety of modes.²⁵ Even a simple addition could specify any combination of three register or main memory locations (two sources for the numbers to be added and one destination to store the result). It offered a floating-point instruction to evaluate a polynomial using a table of coefficients. Since the 1960s, it had been common practice for the processor to implement complex instructions with microcode. When a programmer asked the VAX to evaluate a polynomial, that triggered a long series of simpler internal steps.²⁶ Above all, complex instruction sets were supposed to make computers run faster, in part by reducing the number of times the computer had to fetch and decode new commands.

这些假设早已被接受，但在 20 世纪 70 年代中期，IBM 的 John Cocke 认为，使用更多更简单的指令来完成给定任务的计算机将比使用更少更复杂指令的计算机表现更好。磁芯已被半导体存储器取代，后者速度更快，从而减少了从内存中获取新指令的时间成本。Thomas Watson Jr. 曾认为，IBM 需要一些“野鸭”——不满足于接受传统智慧的人。Cocke 符合这一描述。27^他的想法促成了一台名为 IBM 801 的实验机器的诞生，该机器于 1979 年在 George Radin 的指导下完成^。28

Those assumptions had been long accepted, but in the mid-1970s John Cocke of IBM argued that a computer using more and simpler instructions to complete a given task would outperform one with fewer and more complex instructions. Magnetic core had been replaced by semiconductor memory, which was faster and thus reduced the time cost of fetching new instructions from memory. Thomas Watson Jr. once argued that IBM needed a few “wild ducks” in its ranks—people who were not content to accept conventional wisdom. Cocke fit that description.²⁷ His ideas led to an experimental machine called the IBM 801, completed under the direction of George Radin in 1979.²⁸

RISC 背后的想法是，在代码由编译器生成且内存大而快的时代，拥有更智能的编译器和更简单的硬件是有意义的。编译器（而不是芯片本身）将负责优化将复杂指令转换为简单操作的工作。将指令集精简到其基本要素使编译器的工作更容易，硬件优化也更简单。芯片将配备许多寄存器，需要处理的数据将加载到这些寄存器中。从算术指令中删除地址减少了等待内存访问的需要。更简单、更小的芯片不仅生产成本更低，而且还可以在更高的时钟速度下可靠地运行。

The idea behind RISC was that in an age in which code was produced by compilers and memories were large and fast, it made sense to have smarter compilers and simpler hardware. The compiler, rather than the chip itself, would handle the job of optimizing the conversion of complex instructions into simple operations. Paring the instruction set down to its essentials made the compiler’s job easier and hardware optimization simpler. Chips would be equipped with many registers, into which the data to be worked on was loaded. Removing addresses from arithmetic instructions reduced the need to wait for memory accesses. The simpler, smaller chip was not just cheaper to produce, but it could also be run reliably at a higher clock speed.

RISC 的商业化

Commercialization of RISC

1980 年，伯克利的 David Patterson 领导的一个小组在听到“801 的传闻”后，启动了一个类似的项目。RISC 这个名字就是这个项目的起源。另一个项目，称为 MIPS，于 1981 年在斯坦福大学由 John Hennessy 领导启动^。29

In 1980, a group at Berkeley led by David Patterson, after hearing “rumors of the 801,” started a similar project. That project originated the name RISC. Another project, called MIPS, began in 1981 at Stanford under the leadership of John Hennessy.²⁹

Hennessy 和 Patterson 成为 RISC 的拥护者，定量测量证明 RISC 设计可以从硅片中榨取更多的处理能力。这种不起眼的微处理器诞生于袖珍计算器，其性能很快便超越了小型计算机、大型机甚至超级计算机。当他们公开自己的工作时，他们遭到了质疑，但不久之后，商用芯片开始证明 RISC 的强大功能。

Hennessy and Patterson became evangelists for RISC, supported by quantitative measurements proving that a RISC design could squeeze much more processing power out of a piece of silicon. The humble microprocessor, born of a pocket calculator, would soon surpass minicomputers, mainframes, and even supercomputers in performance. As they publicized their work they were met with skepticism, but before long, commercial chips were beginning to prove RISC’s power.

商用 RISC 芯片所做的不仅仅是缩小其指令集。它们借用了两项已在科学计算中得到证实的技术。超标量功能复制了逻辑单元，因此单个芯片可以容纳两个或多个并行工作的算术引擎。使用 RISC 设计更容易实现这一点，因为每个单元都非常紧凑，可以把几个单元挤在一个芯片上。由 IBM 的 Stretch 率先提出的流水线技术重新设计了处理器，使得用于读取和重新编码指令的电路在执行当前指令的同时，可以忙于执行未来的指令。这在 RISC 设计中也更为实用，因为大多数操作都在固定的时间间隔内发生（就像工厂装配线上的任务一样）。这两种方法都要求对指令进行最佳排序，从而加强了 RISC 对高级编译器的依赖。

Commercial RISC chips did more than just shrink their instruction sets. They borrowed two techniques already proven in scientific computing. Superscalar capabilities duplicated logic units, so that a single chip held two or more arithmetic engines working in parallel. This was much easier to accomplish with a RISC design, because each unit was so compact that several could be squeezed onto a chip. Pipelining, pioneered by IBM’s Stretch, redesigned the processor so that the circuits used to read and recode instructions were kept busy on future instructions while the current one was executed. This too was more practical in RISC designs, because most operations took place in a fixed time interval (like tasks on a factory assembly line). Both approaches required instructions to be optimally ordered, reinforcing reliance of RISC on advanced compilers.

帕特森与 Sun 公司合作，根据他在伯克利的研究成果开发了可扩展处理器架构 (SPARC) 处理器。Sun 公司将该设计授权给其他公司，希望将 SPARC 打造成标准。30^亨尼西的项目还催生了一家商业企业 MIPS 计算机系统。Silicon Graphics 公司围绕 MIPS 芯片重新设计了其工作站产品线。31^惠普公司采用了一种称为精密架构的 RISC 设计。

Patterson worked with Sun to develop the scalable processor architecture (SPARC) processor based on his research at Berkeley. Sun licensed the design to other companies with the hope of making SPARC a standard.³⁰ Hennessy’s project also spawned a commercial venture, MIPS Computer Systems. Silicon Graphics reworked its line of workstations around MIPS chips.³¹ Hewlett-Packard went with a RISC design called precision architecture.

20 世纪 90 年代初，大多数计算机行业评论员都认为，这项新技术将不可避免地取代传统的处理器设计，例如个人电脑中使用的英特尔处理器。386 芯片设计精良，可以支持现代操作系统。但英特尔在提升其性能方面遇到了困难。1985 年，当 386 芯片推出时，最快的运行速度为 16 MHz。到 1992 年，英特尔的时钟速度才翻了一倍（达到 33 MHz），而最快的 RISC 芯片的运行速度超过 150 MHz。

Most computer industry commentators believed during the early 1990s that this new technology would inevitably supplant traditional processor designs, such as the Intel processors used in PCs. The 386 chip was well engineered and could support modern operating systems. But Intel was struggling to boost its performance. In 1985, when the 386 chip was launched, the fastest ran at 16 MHz. By 1992, Intel had barely doubled that clock speed (to 33 MHz), whereas the fastest RISC chips were running at more than 150 MHz.

1989 年推出 486 时，它似乎不过是个权宜之计。缓存是 386 处理器最重要的功能之一。最初的 PC AT 以与处理器相同的时钟频率运行其 RAM 芯片和扩展槽。处理器的速度比价格实惠的 RAM 芯片快，但如果计算机不得不等待更长时间才能从 RAM 中收到下一条指令和数据，那么更快地处理一条指令也没有什么好处。解决方案是使用一个小型高速缓存，以处理器的全速运行，保存计算机当前正在使用的内存区域的副本。大多数内存读取都来自缓存，大大减少了主内存速度较慢造成的性能损失。除了 386 处理器本身，英特尔还出售专门设计的缓存控制器芯片和可选的 387 协处理器。

When the 486 was introduced in 1989 it seemed little more than a stopgap. Cache memory had been one of the most important features of the 386 processor. The original PC AT had run its RAM chips and expansion slots at the same clock rate as the processor. Processors were speeding up faster than affordable RAM chips, yet there would be little benefit to processing an instruction faster if the computer just had to wait longer for the next instructions and data to arrive from RAM. The solution was a small high-speed cache memory running at the full speed of the processor, holding a copy of the areas of memory the computer was currently working with. Most memory reads came from the cache, greatly reducing the performance penalty caused by the slower main memory. Alongside the 386 processor itself, Intel sold a specially designed cache controller chip and the optional 387 coprocessor.

486 将这三种芯片和高速缓存整合到一个非常昂贵的封装中。这种整合使性能比 386 提高了大约一倍。486 的最终 DX2 和 DX4 型号以芯片内部速度的两到三倍于其与计算机其他部分的连接速度运行。这似乎是英特尔架构所能达到的极限。

With the 486, it combined all three chips along with the cache memory into a single, very expensive package. This integration roughly doubled performance over the 386. The final DX2 and DX4 models of the 486 ran the chip’s internals at two or three times the speed of its connection to the rest of the computer. That seemed about as far as the Intel architecture could be pushed.

与此同时，RISC 系统的价格变得足够便宜，可以直接与最强大的 PC 竞争。1989 年，Sun 迈出了重要的一步，推出了量产的 SPARCstation 1 工作站，该工作站采用紧凑型外壳。起价约为 10,000 美元。Byte指出，Sun 的 SPARCstation 提供的浮点性能是配备协处理器芯片的传统工作站的十倍左右。32 ^Sun甚至开始吸引 Lotus 1-2-3 和 WordPerfect 等办公软件的转换。基于 PC 的工作站并不总是更划算。例如，1990 年 12 月，Byte评测了 NCR 首批高性能 486 计算机之一，经测试，其价格高达 31,600 美元。同一期《PC 价工作站》刊登了一篇介绍低至 6,000 美元的 Sun 兼容 SPARC 机器的廉价文章^。33

Meanwhile, RISC systems were becoming cheap enough to compete directly against the most powerful PCs. Sun took a major step in 1989 with the launch of its mass-produced SPARCstation 1 workstation, housed in a compact case. Prices started around $10,000. Byte noted that Sun’s SPARCstation provided around ten times the floating-point performance of a conventional workstation equipped with a coprocessor chip.³² Sun even started to attract conversions of office software such as Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. PC-based workstations weren’t always a better value. In December 1990, for example, Byte reviewed one of the first high-performance 486-based computers from NCR, priced at a staggering $31,600 as tested. The cover of the same issue, “PC-Priced Workstations,” teased a story profiling budget-priced Sun-compatible SPARC machines for as little as $6,000.³³

对英特尔在个人电脑市场地位的最大 RISC 挑战来自 PowerPC 架构。它是 IBM 于 1990 年在其强大的 RS/6000 服务器和工作站上推出的 POWER 架构的微型单芯片版本。IBM、苹果和摩托罗拉共同开发了这一架构，并将其推广为计算机行业的下一个硬件标准。它应该取代英特尔 PC 和摩托罗拉驱动的 Macintosh 电脑。

The biggest RISC challenge to Intel’s position in the personal computer market came from the PowerPC architecture. It was a miniaturized, single-chip version of the POWER architecture that IBM had introduced on its powerful RS/6000 servers and workstations in 1990. IBM, Apple, and Motorola worked together to develop this and promote it as the next hardware standard for the computer industry. It was supposed to replace both Intel PCs and Motorola-powered Macintosh computers.

第一个 PowerPC 处理器 601 于 1992 年问世。IBM 一直等到操作系统问世后才开始销售自己的硬件，而苹果则在 1994 年推出了第一款 Power Macintosh 机型，成为英特尔 PC 的杀手。苹果只重写了老旧的 MacOS 操作系统中最关键的部分，保留了大部分旧代码，以便在模拟下运行缓慢。这让苹果可以快速转向 PowerPC，但也吞噬了大部分性能提升。微软等应用软件生产商同样依赖模拟来运行旧代码，而不是完全重写他们的应用程序。这为英特尔提供了一个关键的窗口，可以在优化软件充分发挥 PowerPC 的优势之前提升其自有芯片的性能。

The first PowerPC processor, the 601, was ready by 1992. IBM held off trying to sell its own hardware until it had an operating system ready, leaving Apple to introduce the would-be killer of the Intel PC with its first Power Macintosh model in 1994. Apple had rewritten only the most critical parts of its aging MacOS operating system, retaining most of the old code to run slowly under emulation. This let Apple shift over to the PowerPC quickly, but it also ate up most of the performance gains. Application software producers, such as Microsoft, similarly relied on emulation to run old code rather than completely rewriting their applications. That gave Intel a crucial window in which to boost the performance of its own chips before optimized software could fully realize the benefits of PowerPC.

微软的回应：Windows NT

Microsoft’s Response: Windows NT

DOS 和 Windows 与英特尔硬件密不可分。如果 RISC 芯片能够提供更高的性能和更低的成本，那么对微软来说可不是什么好消息。1991 年，微软宣布了其下一代操作系统 Windows NT，以期长期生存。当时没有人知道几种竞争对手的 RISC 设计中的哪一种可能会设定未来的标准。NT 将与一个或另一个处理器设计相关的所有代码划分到硬件抽象层中。操作系统代码的其余部分可以在不同的处理器上重复使用。Windows NT 应用程序被禁止直接与硬件通信。它们通过使用软件接口要求 Windows 执行操作来与磁盘、屏幕和其他设备交互。由于这些接口是所有 NT 版本的标准，因此应用程序需要为新处理器重新编译，但不需要进行大量重写。

DOS and Windows were entwined with Intel hardware. If RISC chips were going to deliver higher performance and lower costs, this was not good news for Microsoft. In 1991, Microsoft announced its next-generation operating system, and bid for long-term survival, Windows NT. Nobody yet knew which, if any, of several rival RISC designs might set any future standard. NT compartmentalized all the code tied to one or another processor design into a hardware abstraction layer. The rest of the operating system code could be reused for different processors. Windows NT application programs were forbidden from communicating directly with the hardware. They interacted with disks, screens, and other devices by using software interfaces to ask Windows to carry out operations. As those interfaces were standard across all versions of NT, applications would need to be recompiled for new processors but not rewritten substantially.

Windows NT 与 MS-DOS 几乎没有共同之处，但与 DEC 的小型计算机操作系统有很多共同之处。这并非巧合。它的开发由戴夫·卡特勒 (Dave Cutler) 领导，他是 20 世纪 70 年代开发 VAX 期间 DEC 的首席操作系统设计师之一。20 世纪 80 年代中期，他领导了 DEC 的 RISC 处理器的创建。该项目于 1988 年被取消，这给了微软一个机会来挖走卡特勒和他的团队。在开发初期，当微软和 IBM 仍然应该合作时，该项目被称为 OS/2 3.0，但随着成功Windows 的出现，与 OS/2 的联系被切断了。从表面上看，NT 看起来就像 Windows 3.1，它重新实现了传统 Windows 应用程序使用的软件接口，因此许多应用程序无需修改即可运行。然而，在底层，它是 DEC 的 VMS 操作系统的下一代版本，而不是微软在 MS-DOS 之上构建的一堆不稳定代码的重新编写。甚至它的名字也暗示了这一点：小丑们注意到，将 VMS 中的每个字母增加一个位置会得到 W(indows) NT。（NT 正式代表新技术。）

Windows NT had little in common with MS-DOS but a great deal in common with DEC’s minicomputer operating systems. That was not a coincidence. Its development was led by Dave Cutler, one of DEC’s lead operating system designers during development of the VAX in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, he led the creation of a RISC processor at DEC. It was canceled in 1988, giving Microsoft a chance to lure away Cutler and his team. Early in its development, when Microsoft and IBM were still supposed to be cooperating, the project was known as OS/2 3.0, but with the success of Windows, the connection to OS/2 was dropped. On the surface NT looked just like Windows 3.1, and it reimplemented the software interfaces used by conventional Windows applications so that many would run without modification. Under the hood, however, it was a next-generation version of DEC’s VMS operating system rather than a reworking of the shaky pile of code Microsoft had built on top of MS-DOS. Even its name suggested this: jokers noticed that incrementing each letter in VMS by one position gave W(indows) NT. (NT officially stood for new technology.)

为了确保旧代码或以英特尔为中心的设计假设不会渗入 NT，卡特勒的团队首先在 RISC 芯片上开发和使用 NT，随后在英特尔芯片上进行测试。1993 年推出的 Windows NT 包括适用于英特尔、MIPS 和 DEC 的新 Alpha 处理器的即用型版本。Alpha 部分基于卡特勒正在开发的芯片，是 DEC 试图超越 VAX 架构以弥补市场失地的尝试。在 Windows NT 上测试时，英特尔更快的 486 芯片远远落后于最好的 RISC 产品。

To make sure that no old code or Intel-centered design assumptions crept into NT, Cutler’s team developed and used it on RISC chips first and tested it on Intel chips later. On its launch in 1993, Windows NT included ready-to-run versions for Intel, MIPS, and DEC’s new Alpha processor. Alpha, based in part on the chip Cutler was developing, was DEC’s attempt to move beyond the VAX architecture to make up lost ground in the market. Intel’s faster 486 chips lagged far behind the best RISC offerings when tested with Windows NT.

作为一款 32 位操作系统，NT 可以处理需要大量内存的程序。它支持类似 Unix 的功能，如强大的多任务处理、远程过程调用和各种网络协议。卡特勒希望击败 Unix，而不仅仅是与其匹敌。NT 在管理用户访问资源的权限、保护文件免遭损坏以及快速轻松地设置方面表现更好。

As a 32-bit operating system, NT could handle programs with very large memory needs. It supported Unix-like capabilities like robust multitasking, remote procedure calls, and a huge variety of networking protocols. Cutler was looking to beat Unix and not just match it. NT was better at managing the rights of users to access resources, keeping files safe from corruption, and being quickly and easily set up.

微软的程序员必须在每天下班前将他们的工作提交到一个中央文件中，所有程序员的工作都会在一夜之间汇编成每日构建版本。如果你的贡献导致系统崩溃，你有责任修复它。该构建版本将成为第二天工作的基础。34^此外，一旦构建版本开始发挥作用，编程团队的成员就必须使用它，无论这样做有多么低效。这一要求让生活变得困难，特别是在软件处于早期阶段且大部分功能都不太好的时候，但它让程序员专注于交付高质量的成品。这个过程也有一个令人回味的名字：“吃自己的狗粮” ^。35

Microsoft programmers were required to submit their work to a central file at the end of each day, where overnight all programmers’ work was compiled into a daily build. If your contribution caused the system to crash, you were responsible for fixing it. That build then became the basis for the next day’s work.³⁴ Furthermore, as soon as the build became marginally functional, members of the programming team were required to use it, regardless of how inefficient that might be. This requirement made life difficult, especially when the software was in an early stage and little of it worked well, but it kept the programmers focused on shipping a finished product of high quality. This process, too, had an evocative name: “eating your own dog food.”³⁵

Windows NT 是网络服务器和个人计算机的坚实基础。这是 PC 的一项新发展。Novell Netware 是一款专为文件和打印机共享而优化的服务器操作系统。对于客户端服务器应用程序，NT 比 Novell 好得多，因为服务器必须运行数据库软件或自定义代码。到 1997 年，微软推出了多个版本的 NT，从 4,000 美元的企业版（支持八处理器和平衡服务器集群内工作的功能）一直到单处理器工作站版（发布时售价 319 美元）。所有版本实际上都使用相同的代码，在较便宜的软件包中禁用了对超大内存的支持等功能。

Windows NT was a solid foundation for network servers as well as personal computers. This was a new development for the PC. Novell Netware was a server-only operating system optimized for file and printer sharing. NT was much better than Novell for client server applications, for which servers had to run database software or custom code. By 1997, Microsoft offered several editions of NT, from the $4,000 Enterprise Edition (eight-processor support and features to balance work within a server cluster) all the way down to a single-processor Workstation Edition ($319 at launch). All editions actually used the same code, with features like support for very large memories disabled in the cheaper packages.

英特尔与 RISC 展开竞争

Intel Battles RISC

英特尔的处理器没有 DEC Alpha 芯片等新竞争对手那样的优雅架构，但该公司确实拥有一套出色的生产能力，并且开发预算比许多竞争对手的总收入还要高。它不准备不战而降。1993 年，它推出了奔腾处理器。根据法律规定，586 等数字不能作为商标受到保护，因此这款芯片被赋予了一个名字而不是数字。

Intel’s processors did not have the architectural elegance of the newer rivals, such as DEC’s Alpha chip, but the firm did boast an excellent set of production capabilities and a development budget larger than the entire revenues of many of its competitors. It was not prepared to surrender its dominance without a fight. In 1993 it introduced the Pentium processor. This chip was given a name rather than a number, after legal rulings that numbers, such as 586, could not be protected as trademarks.

奔腾是自 1985 年以来英特尔内核的首次重大重新设计，它整合了 RISC 竞争对手中常见的流水线和超标量技术。该芯片的浮点性能得到了极大提升，解决了英特尔最大的弱点。它甚至可以让两个奔腾处理器并行运行。然而，第一批奔腾处理器并未受到好评。评论者指出，它们价格昂贵、容易过热，并且对于许多任务而言，性能提升不大。《Byte》首次对基于奔腾的个人计算机进行了评测，每台计算机至少要花费 8,500 美元，其特点是“配有咆哮的风扇、特殊的冷却硬件和坚固的坦克状机壳，必须保持关闭，否则电子设备必定会融化”。36 ¹⁹⁹⁴年，人们发现了一个设计缺陷，该缺陷可能导致除法结果不正确。英特尔迟迟未承诺免费更换，引起公愤。

The first major redesign of the Intel core since 1985, the Pentium incorporated the pipelining and superscalar techniques common in its RISC competitors. The chip’s floating-point performance was much improved, addressing Intel’s biggest single weakness. It was even possible to harness two Pentium processors to run in parallel. Yet the first Pentiums were not well received. Reviewers noted that they were expensive, prone to overheating, and for many tasks provided only modest performance gains. Byte’s first round-up of Pentium-based PCs, costing at least $8,500 each, featured “roaring fans, special cooling hardware, and sturdy tank-like cases that must be kept closed, or the electronics will surely melt.”³⁶ In 1994, a design flaw was revealed that could cause incorrect results in dividing. Intel was slow to promise free replacements, causing outrage.

英特尔通过发布更快的版本和比以前更快的降价挽救了奔腾。其中包括一个可以装入小型节能笔记本电脑的低功耗版本。作为主流处理器，奔腾很受欢迎，但作为工作站处理器，它仍然不尽如人意。RISC 的简单性使得能够以更高的时钟速度驱动芯片。1995 年 3 月，《Byte》杂志评论了一系列 Windows NT 工作站。奔腾的运行速度仅为 90 MHz，而更简单的 RISC 设计的 Alpha 则以 275 MHz 的速度运行。由于这一缺陷，即使是双奔腾工作站也只能提供基于 MIPS 的机器性能的一半左右，并且远远落后于 DEC 的^Alpha。37

Intel saved the Pentium by releasing faster versions and lowering prices far more rapidly than it had with earlier chips. That included a lower-power version that could be packaged into a small, power-efficient laptop. As a mainstream processor the Pentium was a hit, but as a workstation processor it still underwhelmed. RISC’s simplicity made it possible to drive chips at a higher clock speed. In March 1995, Byte magazine reviewed a collection of Windows NT workstations. The Pentium ran at only 90 MHz, whereas the simpler RISC design of the Alpha zoomed along at 275 MHz. Because of this handicap, even dual Pentium workstations delivered only about half the performance of the MIPS-based machines and fell still further behind DEC’s Alpha.³⁷

英特尔随后推出了 Pentium Pro，并于当年晚些时候发布。这款处理器部署了类似 RISC 的内核，作为复杂芯片的高性能核心，能够解释现有代码。英特尔将高达 1,024 KB 的高速缓存内存压缩到与处理器本身位于同一陶瓷封装内的一两个额外硅片中，将英特尔的工程优势发挥到了极致。这比主板上的内存访问速度快得多，大大提高了其在 Windows NT 等 32 位操作系统上的性能。由于制造过程的复杂性，新芯片仍然是一个昂贵的选择，但它让英特尔重新在工作站和服务器领域展开竞争。基于英特尔的工作站在 Windows NT 性能上仍然落后于基于 Alpha 的替代产品，但差距显然正在缩小——而且出乎意料。

Intel countered with the Pentium Pro, released later that year. This deployed a RISC-like core as the high-performance heart of a complex chip able to interpret existing code. It pushed Intel’s engineering advantages to their limits by squeezing up to 1,024 KB of high-speed cache memory into one or two additional silicon chips placed within the same ceramic package as the processor itself. This could be accessed much more rapidly than memory on the motherboard, which greatly improved its performance with 32-bit operating systems such as Windows NT. The new chip remained an expensive option, owing to the complexity of this manufacturing process, but it put Intel back into contention for workstations and servers. Intel-based workstations still lagged Windows NT performance of Alpha-based alternatives, but the gap was clearly—and unexpectedly—narrowing.

1996 年，桑迪亚国家实验室正在建造的 ASCI Red 超级计算机成为第一台在标准基准测试中每秒运算速度超过 1 万亿次浮点运算的计算机，Pentium Pro 的公关因此得到了提升。Cray 计算机依赖于特殊材料和定制结构，而新一代超级计算机则使用大量并行运行的标准处理器和其他大众市场组件。如今，同样的处理器为台式工作站和世界一流的超级计算机提供支持。ASCI Red 并行运行 9,298 个处理器，保持了世界上速度最快的计算机称号约四年。

The Pentium Pro got a public relations boost in 1996 when the ASCI Red supercomputer being built at Sandia National Laboratories became the first computer to clock in above one teraflop (a thousand billion floating-point operations) per second on a standard benchmark. Whereas Cray computers had relied on exotic materials and custom construction, the new generation of supercomputers used large numbers of standard processors and other mass-market components running in parallel. The same processors now powered desktop workstations and world-beating supercomputers. Running 9,298 processors in parallel, ASCI Red retained the title world’s fastest computer for about four years.

英特尔的新架构随着 1997 年推出的 Pentium II 系列而成为主流。该系列调整了 Pentium Pro 的高性能核心，将缓存移到与处理器其他部分相同的封装中，并使用在传统 Windows 版本中仍然很常见的 16 位代码提高了性能。Byte 指出：“现在你不能忽视 PC 行业正在发生的巨大变化。传统的基于英特尔的 Windows 系统正在大举进入以前由 Unix 工作站主导的市场。” ³⁸ Pentium II 和略微改进的 Pentium III 构成了英特尔产品线的支柱，直到 2003 年。正如Byte所承诺的那样，它们为普通个人电脑带来了工作站级的性能，同时又不牺牲与标准应用程序和操作系统的兼容性。

Intel’s new architecture went mainstream with the Pentium II series, introduced in 1997. This tweaked the high-performance core of the Pentium Pro, moved the cache memory onto the same package as the rest of the processor, and improved performance with the 16-bit code still common in conventional versions of Windows. “You can’t ignore the dramatic shift occurring in the PC industry now,” noted Byte. “Traditional Intel-based Windows systems are aggressively moving into markets previously dominated by Unix workstations.”³⁸ The Pentium II, and slightly improved Pentium III, formed the backbone of Intel’s product line until 2003. As Byte had promised, they brought workstation-level performance to ordinary personal computers without sacrificing compatibility with standard applications and operating systems.

Windows 95

Windows 95

大多数快速的新型英特尔处理器都运行着微软的新主流操作系统。Windows 95 结束了 Window 3 系列的五年运行，标志着 MS-DOS 作为独立产品的终结。它于 1995 年推出，营销推广费用估计为 3 亿美元。根据包装盒上的说明，Windows 95 只需要 4 MB 的 RAM，是 NT 最低要求的三分之一，尽管任何认真对待这一点的人都可能会等到它在程序之间切换时老去。

Most of those fast new Intel processors were running Microsoft’s new mainstream operating system. Windows 95 ended the five-year run of the Window 3 series and marked the end of MS-DOS as a separate product. It was launched in 1995 with a marketing push estimated to cost $300 million. According to the box, Windows 95 needed only 4 MB of RAM, a third of the minimum for NT, although anyone who took this seriously was likely to grow old waiting for it to switch between programs.

作为操作系统，Windows 95 不如 Windows NT 先进。作为产品，它的目标更加大胆：为性能较弱的计算机用户提供 NT 的大部分优势，添加强大的多媒体功能，并保持与现有应用程序几乎完美的兼容性。网络性能得到了很大改善，包括内置对 Internet 的 TCP/IP 协议、拨号 Internet 访问以及 telnet 和 ftp 等 Internet 应用程序的支持。与 NT 一样，Windows 95 提供了抢占式多任务处理，允许同时顺利运行多个程序，并允许用户终止错误的程序而无需重新启动计算机。从纯粹主义者的角度来看，它对这些功能的实现有很多不足之处。需要在性能较弱的计算机上运行旧应用程序和工作，这导致了 NT 风格的 32 位功能与老式的混合体16 位 Windows 和 DOS 的残留部分。这牺牲了稳定性以换取兼容性：网卡等设备的旧驱动程序或编写不当的驱动程序仍可能导致整个系统崩溃。微软很清楚，Windows NT 是“工业级”选项，而 Windows 95 则适合资金较紧张的消费者和企业。

As an operating system, Windows 95 was less advanced than Windows NT. As a product, its goal was even bolder: provide most of the advantages of NT to users of less powerful computers, throw in powerful multimedia features, and retain almost perfect compatibility with existing applications. Network performance was much improved, including built-in support for the Internet’s TCP/IP protocol, for dial-up Internet access, and for Internet applications such as telnet and ftp. Like NT, Windows 95 offered pre-emptive multitasking, allowing smooth simultaneous operation of several programs and letting the user terminate an errant program without restarting the computer. From a purist’s point of view, its implementation of these features left a great deal to be desired. The need to run old applications and work on less powerful computers resulted in a complex hybrid of NT-style 32-bit features with old-fashioned 16-bit Windows and residual chunks of DOS. That sacrificed stability for compatibility: an old or badly written driver for something like a network card could still crash the entire system. Microsoft was clear that Windows NT was the “industrial strength” option while Windows 95 was for consumers and businesses with shallower pockets.

新的用户界面设计比其前身更具吸引力、更一致、更强大。它引入了“开始”菜单、系统托盘和运行程序的图标，这些图标自此便装饰着屏幕的边缘。仅是将滚石乐队的歌曲“Start Me Up”的一部分授权用于推广新系统的电视广告，就花费了数百万美元。怀疑论者认为，只有微软才能制作出使用“开始”按钮关闭计算机的操作系统。Windows 95 结合了几乎与 Unix 类似的功能和明显与 Unix 不同的承诺，以简化自动自我配置。新的即插即用功能试图自动识别新硬件并安装适当的驱动程序。起初，这相当不尽如人意。在重新设计主板和扩展硬件以适应自动配置后，它最终开始按承诺工作。Windows 95 还改进了对笔记本电脑的支持。

The new user-interface design was more attractive, more consistent, and more powerful than its predecessors. It introduced the Start menu, system tray, and icons for running programs that have adorned the edge of the screen ever since. Millions of dollars were spent just to license part of the song “Start Me Up” from the Rolling Stones for television ads promoting the new system. Skeptics quibbled that only Microsoft could make an operating system in which you used the Start button to shut down the computer. Windows 95 combined an almost Unix-like power with a decidedly non-Unix-like commitment to ease automatic self-configuration. New plug and play capabilities attempted to automatically recognize new hardware and install the appropriate drivers. At first this was rather hit and miss. After the redesign of motherboards and expansion hardware to accommodate automatic configuration, it eventually began to work as promised. Windows 95 also improved support for laptops.

微软仅用了四天时间就售出了第一百万个升级包，其中许多都是送给午夜发布会上排队等候的急切客户。39^五周内，它就售出了七百万个。然而，微软真正的主导地位来自于它对新电脑预装操作系统的垄断。Windows 95 功能强大，大多数用户没有理由考虑改用 IBM 的 OS/2，它保留了一些理论上的优势，但也存在自己的怪癖和局限性。IBM 放弃了 OS/2，让它成为个人电脑市场上众多玩家之一。几年后，作为从硬件转向计算机服务的一部分，IBM 退出了台式电脑销售。2004 年，当 IBM 将其大获成功的 ThinkPad 系列笔记本电脑出售给新贵中国公司联想时，IBM 放弃了 23 年前创立的个人电脑业务^。40

Microsoft took just four days to sell its first million upgrade packages, many of them to eager customers lining up at midnight launch events.³⁹ Within five weeks, it had sold seven million. Microsoft’s true dominance, however, came from its lock on the operating systems pre-installed on new computers. Windows 95 was powerful enough that there was little reason for most users to consider switching to IBM’s OS/2, which retained some theoretical advantages but had its own quirks and limitations. IBM gave up on OS/2, leaving it as one player among many in the personal computer market. A few years later, as part of a shift from hardware to computer services, IBM withdrew from selling desktop computers. In 2004, when it disposed of its highly successful ThinkPad line of laptop computers to upstart Chinese company Lenovo, IBM left the PC business it had created 23 years earlier.⁴⁰

经过小幅升级，Windows 95 在接下来的十年中一直是标准的 PC 操作系统。一系列的更新和改进版本使其保持新鲜。根据 Garner 集团的数据，2002 年 4 月，第 10 亿台个人电脑出货。41^这些电脑中的大多数都使用 Windows 95 的变体，而世界上很大一部分电脑用户没有使用过其他操作系统。

With minor upgrades, Windows 95 remained the standard PC operating system for the rest of the decade. A succession of updates and improved versions kept it fresh. In April 2002, according to the Garner group, the billionth personal computer was shipped.⁴¹ Most of those computers used a variant of Windows 95, and a large portion of the computer users in the world had no experience with other operating systems.

英特尔和微软获胜

Intel and Microsoft Victorious

到 Windows 95 发布时，RISC 对英特尔的挑战已经开始瓦解。1996 年，在 Silicon Graphics 未能说服其他公司使用其处理器制造工作站后，微软放弃了对 MIPS 的 Windows NT 支持；1997 年，当其他计算机制造商明显开始不会效仿苹果。20 世纪 90 年代末，DEC 的 Alpha 芯片赢得了工作站用户的忠实拥护，但该公司无法快速提高芯片速度，无法保持与英特尔竞争对手相比的绝对速度优势。康柏于 1998 年收购了 DEC。第二年，其管理层关闭了支持 Alpha 芯片上的 Windows NT 的团队。RISC 在工作站和个人电脑领域对英特尔的挑战正式结束。

By the time Windows 95 launched, the RISC challenge to Intel was already beginning to collapse. Microsoft dropped Windows NT support for MIPS in 1996, after Silicon Graphics failed to persuade other firms to build workstations with its processors; and for PowerPC in 1997, when it became clear that other computer manufacturers were not going to follow Apple’s lead. DEC’s Alpha chips earned a loyal following among workstation users in the late 1990s, but the firm couldn’t speed them up quickly enough to maintain a compelling speed advantage over Intel-based competitors. Compaq took over DEC in 1998. The next year its managers closed the group working to support Windows NT on Alpha chips. The RISC challenge to Intel for workstations and personal computers was officially over.

苹果对 PowerPC 的依赖变成了一种弱点而不是优势。即使用 PowerPC 代码重新实现，其 MacOS 操作系统也缺少关键功能，例如强大的多任务处理和对多处理器的支持。它本应只是一个权宜之计。苹果与 IBM 的联盟还包括开发共享的面向对象操作系统 Taligent，但这一努力很快就因公司政治和技术挑战而成为牺牲品。苹果的承诺转移到一个新项目 Copeland，以生产一个能够运行旧程序的现代操作系统。该计划也被放弃了。随着新的需求对其摇摇欲坠的基础提出新的要求，现有的 MacOS 变得越来越不稳定。苹果举步维艰：在 1993 年至 1997 年间，苹果解雇了三名首席执行官。最后一位首席执行官吉尔·阿梅利奥 (Gill Amelio) 只任职了一年多。他引人入胜的书《On the Firing Line》揭露了公司根深蒂固的功能障碍以及传统管理补救措施对修复这些障碍的无效性。⁴² Macintosh 的市场份额持续缩小，从 1991 年的 12% 的高位下降到 1998 年的 2.7%。

Apple’s reliance on PowerPC then became a weakness rather than a strength. Even when reimplemented in PowerPC code, its MacOS operating system lacked crucial features such as robust multitasking and support for multiple processors. It was supposed to be only a stopgap. Apple’s alliance with IBM also included development of a shared object-oriented operating system Taligent, but that effort quickly fell victim to corporate politics and technological challenges. Apple’s promises shifted to a new project, Copeland, to produce a modern operating system able to run old programs. That plan was abandoned, too. The existing MacOS grew ever less stable as new demands were placed on its rickety foundation. Apple struggled: between 1993 and 1997 Apple fired three chief executive officers. The last of those, Gill Amelio, lasted little more than a year. His fascinating book, On the Firing Line, laid bare the company’s ingrained dysfunction and the ineffectiveness of conventional managerial remedies in fixing it.⁴² Macintosh’s market share continued to shrink, from a high of 12 percent in 1991 down to 2.7 percent in 1998.

1998 年 10 月，微软宣布即将推出的 Windows NT 5.0 将能够很好地支持消费硬件和软件，让每个人都能使用。它将其更名为 Windows 2000。最终，微软又推迟了一个版本。2001 年 10 月，微软用 Windows XP（其最稳定、寿命最长的操作系统之一）取代了 Windows 2000 和 Windows Millennium Edition（Windows 95 系列的最后一款）。在命令窗口中输入ver会显示 Windows XP 实际上是 NT 5.2 版。从那时起，微软推出了许多新版本的 Windows，有些比其他版本更成功，但从未确定一个一致的编号方案。有个笑话说，如果有人在微软公司学会了从 1 数到 10，那么他在一生中就会遇到很多困难，他要经过 2、286、386、3.0、3.1、3.11、3.5、95、4.0、98、ME、2000、XP、Vista、7、8 和 8.2，然后跳过 9，最终数到 10。但从本质上讲，自 2001 年以来，每个新版本的 Windows 都是 Windows NT 的演变。

In October 1998, Microsoft announced that its forthcoming Windows NT 5.0 would support consumer hardware and software well enough to work for everyone. It renamed it Windows 2000. In the end Microsoft pushed the convergence back by one more release. In October 2001, Microsoft replaced both Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium Edition, the last of the Windows 95 series, with Windows XP, one of its most solid and longest-lived operating systems. Typing ver into a command window revealed that Windows XP was really NT version 5.2. Since then, Microsoft has launched many new versions of Windows, some more successful than others, without ever settling on a coherent numbering scheme. There’s a joke that someone who learned to count from 1 to 10 with Microsoft would struggle in life, proceeding through 2, 286, 386, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 3.5, 95, 4.0, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.2 before skipping over 9, to finally reach 10. Under the hood, though, every new version of Windows since 2001 has been an evolution of Windows NT.

苹果公司屡屡未能与微软相媲美，无法生产出具有向后兼容性的强大新操作系统。鉴于其对 Macintosh 硬件的严格控制使这项工作更容易，这反映了其管理和工程能力的可悲。直到 1997 年史蒂夫·乔布斯重返苹果公司后，该公司才最终坚持一项战略，最终推出了一款新的操作系统系统。OS X 于 2001 年发布，大大减轻了 Apple 剩余客户的负担，它从乔布斯失败的 NeXT 工作站（因此也从 Unix 的 BSD 衍生产品）中借鉴了新基础，重建了熟悉的 Macintosh 界面。再加上微软推出的 Windows XP，它完成了个人电脑行业向强大而强大的小型计算机式操作系统的迁移。

Apple repeatedly failed to match Microsoft’s trick of producing a robust new operating system with backward compatibility. Given that its tight control over Macintosh hardware made this job easier, this was a sad reflection on its management and engineering capabilities. Only after Steve Jobs returned to the helm of Apple in 1997 did the company finally stick with a strategy long enough to finally deliver a new operating system. OS X, released in 2001 to the enormous relief of Apple’s remaining customers, rebuilt the familiar Macintosh interface on a new foundation borrowed from Jobs’s failed NeXT workstations (and therefore from the BSD derivative of Unix). Coupled with Microsoft’s launch of Windows XP, it completed the migration of the personal computer industry to robust and powerful minicomputer-like operating systems.

四年后，苹果宣布未来所有 Macintosh 机型都将基于标准英特尔处理器。自那时起，绝大多数个人电脑都使用英特尔芯片。其余大部分使用其他公司的兼容芯片，多年来，这一挑战时起时落。1999 年推出的 AMD Athlon 经常在性能和价格上击败英特尔最强大的芯片。在这次和其他英特尔看起来脆弱的场合，它利用其强大的工程和制造优势，在一两年内重新夺回了主动权。

Four years later, Apple announced that all future Macintosh models would be based on standard Intel processors. Since then, the vast majority of personal computers have used Intel chips. Most of the rest use compatible chips from other firms, a challenge that has ebbed and flowed over the years. The AMD Athlon, introduced in 1999 often beat Intel’s most powerful chips in performance as well as price. On this and other occasions when Intel looked vulnerable, it recaptured the initiative within a year or two, drawing on its formidable engineering and manufacturing advantages.

2000 年 8 月，美国家庭首次报告称拥有个人电脑的比例达到大多数。对于年收入超过 75,000 美元的家庭来说，电脑几乎是必需品，拥有率达到 88%。43 ²⁰世纪 90 年代是个人电脑行业非常激动人心的时期，因为新架构和操作系统的推出都得到了强大联盟的支持。然而，这十年结束时，微软和英特尔比以往任何时候都更具主导地位。这听起来像一个虎头蛇尾，但为了克服威胁，两家公司都从内到外重塑了他们的技术。微软抛弃了 DOS 和 Windows 3.0 的所有部分，小心翼翼地用小型计算机操作系统取而代之，以至于大多数用户都没有注意到。英特尔将工作站式 RISC 芯片的核心放入其新处理器中，使用它以前所未有的速度运行旧代码。在这两种情况下，高性能和向后兼容性的结合都被证明是无懈可击的。

In August 2000, for the first time, a majority of American households reported owning a personal computer. For households earning more than $75,000 a year a computer was practically a necessity, with 88 percent ownership.⁴³ The 1990s had been a time of great excitement in the personal computer industry, as new architectures and operating systems were introduced with formidable alliances behind them. Yet the decade ended with Microsoft and Intel more dominant than ever. That sounds like an anticlimax, but to overcome the threat, both had remade their technologies from the inside out. Microsoft had thrown out every piece of DOS and Windows 3.0, replacing them with a minicomputer operating system so carefully that most users never noticed. Intel had put the heart of a workstation-style RISC chip inside its new processors, using it to run old code faster than ever before. In both cases the combination of high performance and backward compatibility proved unassailable.

英特尔在台式机、笔记本电脑和服务器电脑上的成功并没有在每种电脑上复制。随着 RISC 芯片从台式机上消失，它们开始在其他领域传播。MIPS 作为 20 世纪 90 年代末任天堂 64 游戏机处理器的供应商，早早取得了胜利。从 2006 年到 2012 年，基于 IBM PowerPC 架构的定制芯片为三大视频游戏机制造商的旗舰机型提供支持：微软（Xbox 360）、任天堂（Wii）和索尼（PlayStation 3）。PowerPC 芯片还广泛用于汽车。当今使用最广泛的处理器架构 ARM 是一种 RISC 设计。它为绝大多数智能手机和平板电脑提供支持，现在在个人电脑市场对英特尔构成威胁。我们将在后续章节中讲述这些故事。

Intel’s success with desktop, laptop, and server computers was not repeated with every kind of computer. As RISC chips vanished from the desktop, they spread elsewhere. MIPS scored an early win as the supplier of processors for the Nintendo 64 consoles of the late 1990s. From 2006 to 2012, custom chips derived from IBM’s PowerPC architecture powered the flagship models from all three dominant producers of video game consoles: Microsoft (for the Xbox 360), Nintendo (the Wii), and Sony (the PlayStation 3). PowerPC chips were also used widely in cars. Today’s most widely used processor architecture, ARM, is a RISC design. It powers the vast majority of smartphones and tablets and now threatens Intel in the market for personal computers. We tell those stories in subsequent chapters.

早期多媒体

Early Multimedia

这些新功能被称作“多媒体”。这个词和这个想法都不是新的。几十年来，艺术家们一直在组合不同的媒体。在探索新技术用于创造性目的的可能性方面，最具影响力的团体是 1985 年成立的麻省理工学院媒体实验室。它并非源自麻省理工学院的计算机科学团队，而是源自尼古拉斯·尼葛洛庞帝创立的建筑机器小组。尼葛洛庞帝曾接受过建筑专业的培训，但他的重点是人与信息和媒体技术的互动。该实验室的早期项目之一是 1978-9 年创建的阿斯彭电影地图（见图11.1）。它是通过驾驶装有电影摄影机的汽车在科罗拉多州的阿斯彭周围行驶而创建的。序列被传输到由微型计算机控制的激光磁盘（一种模拟视频系统）上。用户可以放大和缩小地图并虚拟地穿过街道，改变视角和行进方向。一些建筑物可以进入和探索。这个相当大的标签被 ARPA 收购，它对虚拟训练环境很感兴趣。

The term given to these new capabilities was multimedia. Neither the word nor the idea was new. Artists had been combing different media for decades. The most influential group exploring the possibilities of new technology for creative purposes was the Media Lab at MIT, established in 1985. It grew not from MIT’s computer science teams, but from the Architecture Machine Group, founded by Nicholas Negroponte. Negroponte had trained as an architect, but his focus was on the interaction of humans with information and media technologies. One of its early projects was the Aspen Movie Map, created in 1978–9 (see figure 11.1). It was created by driving a car fitted with movie cameras around Aspen, Colorado. Sequences were transferred to laser disk (an analog video system) controlled by a minicomputer. Users could zoom in and out of a map and travel virtually through the streets, changing viewing angles and direction of travel. Some buildings could be entered and explored. The sizable tab was picked up by ARPA, which was interested in virtual training environments.

微型计算机还不足以以数字方式存储视频序列——它只是指示磁盘播放序列。读取镭射影碟（LP 唱片大小的光盘）的视频播放器自 1978 年以来一直在销售，但由于它们比录像机更贵，而且无法录制广播，因此它们从未吸引过大众市场。光盘存储的是模拟视频，而不是数字视频，尽管后来的版本将其与数字音频结合在一起。

The minicomputer wasn’t yet powerful enough to store video sequences digitally—it just directed the disk to play sequences. Video players reading LaserDiscs, optical disks the size of LP records, had been on sale since 1978, but because they were more expensive than video cassette recorders and could not record broadcasts, they never appealed to the mass market. The discs stored analog video, not digital, though later versions coupled it with digital audio.

该小组还尝试制作该镇的数字模型，并利用它来创建逼真的 3D 视图，但这还不能实时完成。相对逼真的计算机图形序列，包括实体物体、灯光和阴影，最早出现在《电子世界争霸战》（ 1982 年）（见图11.2）、《星际迷航 II：可汗之怒》（1982 年）和《最后的星际战机》（1984 年）等电影中。这需要大量的计算机能力。专业公司 Digital Productions 需要在其 Cray X-MP 超级计算机上花 10 秒的时间来渲染每一帧并将其输出到胶片中。 《最后的星际战机》的 27 分钟数字镜头花费了数月的准备工作，占用了 Cray 很长时间，以至于 Digital Productions 不得不暂时放弃其利润丰厚的动画广告业务^。5

The group also experimented with producing a digital model of the town and using it to create realistic 3D views, but this could not yet be done in real time. Relatively realistic computer graphics sequences, with solid objects, lighting, and shadows, first appeared in movies like Tron (1982) (see figure 11.2), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and The Last Starfighter (1984). This required massive amounts of computer power. The specialist company Digital Productions needed ten seconds of time on its Cray X-MP supercomputer to render each frame and output it to film. The twenty-seven minutes of digital footage for The Last Starfighter took months of preparatory work and tied up the Cray for so long that Digital Productions had to temporarily abandon its lucrative trade in animated commercials.⁵

计算机化音乐和语音

Computerizing Music and Speech

用电子方式生成语音和音乐比创建逼真的图像容易得多。语音由少量不同的声音组成，称为音素。英语中的音素不到 50 个。用电子方式生成这些声音的想法可以追溯到 1928 年贝尔实验室颁发的一项专利。最初的动机是将语音压缩并加密为数字数据，以便安全传输。Homer Dudley 在 1939 年的世界博览会上展示了一种键盘驱动的语音合成器。到 20 世纪 60 年代，研究人员已经制造出能够自动将文本转换为可识别语音的计算机语音合成器。1978 年，德州仪器推出了一款名为 Speak & Spell 的玩具，它通过发音和键入字母来教孩子们拼写。一位贝尔实验室的工程师表示，该玩具在电气工程师中引起的兴奋与在孩子们中引起的兴奋一样多。6^这款售价 50 美元的玩具标志着数字信号处理从实验室走向公众意识。这项技术是由一款新芯片 TMS5100 实现的，该芯片将所有合成语音所需的电路都缩小了。这款芯片及其后续产品已进入视频游戏、计算机和其他电子设备领域。

Generating speech and music electronically was much easier than creating realistic images. Speech consists of a small number of distinct sounds, called phonemes. English has fewer than fifty of these. The idea of producing those sounds electronically goes back to a Bell Labs patent issued in 1928. The original motivation was to compress and encrypt speech as digital data for secure transmission. Homer Dudley demonstrated a keyboard-driven speech synthesizer at the 1939 World’s Fair. By the 1960s, researchers had built computerized speech synthesizers able to automatically turn text into recognizable speech. In 1978, Texas Instruments introduced a toy called the Speak & Spell which taught children to spell by pronouncing words as they keyed the letters. One Bell Labs engineer remarked that the toy generated as much excitement among electrical engineers as it did among children.⁶ The $50 toy marked the emergence of digital signal processing out of the laboratory and into public consciousness. It was made possible by a new chip, the TMS5100, which miniaturized all the circuits needed to synthesize speech. The chip, and its successors, made their way into video games, computers, and other electronic devices.

音乐可以用类似的技术合成，尽管第一批合成器使用的是复杂的模拟电子设备。它们是作为实验室项目创建的，或小批量生产的。它们干净、超凡脱俗的声音是 20 世纪 60 年代几首热门歌曲的基础，包括受第一颗电信卫星启发的单曲“Telstar”和Wendy Carlos 1968 年的专辑《Switched-On Bach 》 ^。7模拟设备，如雷鸣般的 Mellotron 或甜美的 Hammond B-3 风琴加上机械 Leslie 旋转扬声器，需要电子专家不断重新调整，并且需要半挂卡车和大型工作人员从一个演出地运送到另一个演出地。到 20 世纪 70 年代，模拟合成器成为流行前卫摇滚乐队（如 Yes、Genesis 和 Emerson、Lake & Palmer）的固定设备，并定义了电子音乐先驱 Kraftwerk 的审美。 1977 年，唐娜·萨默 (Donna Summer) 的惊艳之作《I Feel Love》将未来主义的 Moog 合成器声音带入迪斯科舞厅，并激发了整个电子舞曲流派的灵感^。8

Music could be synthesized using similar techniques, although the first synthesizers used complex analog electronics. They were created as laboratory projects or manufactured in small batches. Their clean, otherworldly sounds were the foundation of several 1960s hits, including the single “Telstar,” inspired by the first telecommunications satellite, and the 1968 album Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos.⁷ Analog equipment such as the thunderous Mellotron or sweet Hammond B-3 organ coupled with mechanical Leslie rotating speakers needed constant readjustment by electronics experts and took semitrucks and large crews to haul from one gig to another. By the 1970s, analog synthesizers were a fixture of popular progressive rock bands such as Yes, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and defined the aesthetic of electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. In 1977, Donna Summer’s breathtaking “I Feel Love” brought the futuristic Moog synthesizer sound to discotheques where it inspired entire genres of electronic dance music.⁸

数字合成器基于能够将输入数据转换成声音的标准芯片构建，演奏起来更容易，需要的调整也更少。最早的数字合成器使用一种称为 FM 合成的技术，将少量输入参数转换成音符。其明亮、清澈的声音让人联想到一个摆脱历史纠葛的外星世界。廉价的 FM 合成器带有许多预定义的声音，乐观地标明了与这些声音几乎完全不同的乐器的名称。

Digital synthesizers, built around standard chips able to turn input data into sounds, were easier to play and needed less tinkering. The earliest used a technique called FM synthesis to turn a handful of input parameters into a musical note. Its bright, crystalline sound evoked an alien world free from the entanglements of history. Cheap FM synthesizers came with many predefined voices, optimistically labeled with the names of musical instruments to which they sounded almost, but not quite, entirely different.

到了 20 世纪 80 年代，数字合成器已经足够便宜，有抱负的音乐家和青少年业余爱好者都可以购买。雅马哈 DX7 于 1983 年推出后，四年内销量超过 16 万台。它利用了一种新的接口，即乐器数字接口 (MIDI)，允许键盘、音序器（专用控制合成器是一种电子合成器，它是一种计算机或普通计算机，用于自动控制电子乐器。Atari ST 是少数几款标配 MIDI 接口的计算机之一，在 20 世纪 80 年代末的舞台上随处可见。合成器定义了那个时代的大部分流行音乐，尤其是在英国，活泼的 Human League、忧郁的 Depeche Mode、夸张的 Soft Cell、东方主义的 Japan 和奇妙的 Pet Shop Boys 以各种方式探索了合成器的可能性。并不是每个人都喜欢这种新声音——一位心怀不满的作家创造了“卡西欧效应”一词，以一家领先的廉价键盘生产商命名，用来描述一种技术被一种方便但劣质的竞争对手取代^。9

By the 1980s, digital synthesizers were cheap enough to be purchased by aspiring musicians and teenage amateurs. After its 1983 introduction, the Yamaha DX7 sold more than 160,000 in four years. It exploited a new interface, the musical instrument digital interface (MIDI), which allowed keyboards, sequencers (dedicated control computers), or regular computers to automate the control of electronic instruments. The Atari ST, one of the few computers to include MIDI sockets as standard, was a common sight on stage during the late 1980s. Synthesizers defined much of the popular music of the era, particularly in Britain where their possibilities were variously explored by the perky Human League, mopey Depeche Mode, camp Soft Cell, orientalist Japan, and wonderfully arch Pet Shop Boys. Not everyone liked the new sound—one disgruntled writer coined the term “Casio effect,” after a leading producer of cheap keyboards, to describe the displacement of a technology by a convenient but inferior rival.⁹

键盘合成器与电子鼓机相结合，发出人类无法复制的机械节奏。标志性的鼓机 Roland TR-808 被贴上了“节奏作曲家。计算机控制”的标签。它将模拟鼓合成与数字排序相结合，由嵌入式微控制器（进行控制的计算机）驱动，运行刻录在 ROM 中的程序。微控制器作为通用技术溶剂，占据了计算机技术的大部分功能。截至撰写本文时，它们批量订购时每个只需几美分，比它们所溶解的大量控制机制更便宜、更灵活，从洗衣机机械编程器中的旋转圆筒到防盗警报器中的硬连线数字逻辑。

Keyboard synthesizers were coupled with electronic drum machines, grinding out robotic rhythms that no human could hope to replicate. The iconic drum machine, the Roland TR-808, was labeled “Rhythm Composer. Computer Controlled.” It combined analog drum synthesis with digital sequencing, driven by an embedded microcontroller (the computer doing the controlling), running a program burned into ROM. Microcontrollers account for most of computer technology’s power as a universal technological solvent. As of this writing, they cost just a few cents each when ordered in bulk, making them cheaper and more flexible than the huge range of control mechanisms they’ve dissolved, from rotating cylinders in the mechanical programmers of washing machines to hardwired digital logic in burglar alarms.

TR-808 发出的声音，尤其是低音效果，与真正的鼓声完全不同，但这最终使它们比那些更像人类鼓手的昂贵竞争对手更有趣，也更容易被识别。在“Psycho Killer”中，Talking Heads 利用枪声的相似性来唤起人们对抽搐的精神病患者的印象。在短暂的生产周期结束¹⁰年后，808 仍然拥有一批狂热追随者，Kanye West 于 2008 年发行的专辑《808s & Heartbreak》就是明证。

The noises produced by the TR-808, particularly the bass effects, were nothing like real drums, but that ultimately made them more interesting—and more immediately recognizable—than expensive rivals better able to pass for human drummers. On “Psycho Killer,” Talking Heads exploited their resemblance to gun shots to evoke a twitchy psychopath.¹⁰ Decades after the end of its short production run, the 808 maintains a cult following, testified to by Kanye West’s 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak.

电子鼓节奏成为许多新音乐流派的支柱，包括许多嘻哈音乐和被归入“电子舞曲”这一大类的音乐。正如媒体学者杰克·汉密尔顿 (Jack Hamilton) 所写，20 世纪后期的流行音乐的特点是“从以和声进行和传统歌曲结构来思考音乐，转变为以序列、离散的声音和时间段落来思考音乐，并无限重复和修改。”按照这个定义，音乐制作任务已经成为一种计算机编程。汉密尔顿认为：“与当时的任何其他乐器相比，808 都更能实现并迎合这种转变。” ¹¹

Electronic drum rhythms became the backbone for many new musical genres, including much hip-hop and the approaches subsumed under the broad label “electronic dance music.” As media scholar Jack Hamilton wrote, the popular music of the late twentieth century was characterized by “the move from thinking of music in terms of harmonic progressions and conventional song structure to thinking of music in terms of sequences, discrete passages of sound and time to be repeated and revised ad infinitum.” The task of musical production had, by this definition, become a kind of computer programming. “More than any other instrument of its time,” argued Hamilton, “the 808 both enabled and catered to this shift.”¹¹

采样和数字录音

Sampling and Digital Recording

要使数字乐器听起来逼真，需要采用不同的方法，即以数字方式录制真实乐器。音乐录制和播放只捕捉一个属性：响度。我们的耳朵在讲话或音乐中听到的不同音调来自不同频率的振动，从 20 赫兹（即每秒重复 20 次的振动）到 20,000 赫兹。

Making digital instruments sound realistic would take a different approach, based on digitally recording real instruments. Music recording and playback captures only one property: loudness. The different tones our ears hear in speech or music come from vibrations at different frequencies, from 20 hertz, that is, vibrations repeated 20 times a second, to 20,000 hertz.

记录介质捕捉音量变化的准确度越高，就越能忠实再现这些振动。模拟介质用其他量成比例的变化来表示音量变化。麦克风将音量变化转化为电阻变化。连接到录音机后，这些变化就变成了磁带磁性的变化。转盘上的针沿着唱片上的凹槽移动。当针上下移动时，晶体产生的电流与音乐的响度成比例变化。

The more accurately a recording medium can capture changes in volume, the more faithfully it can reproduce these vibrations. Analog media represent changes in volume with a proportional change in some other quantity. A microphone turned changes in volume into changes in resistance. Hooked up to a tape recorder, these became changes in the magnetism of the tape. The needle in a turntable followed a groove in the record. As it moved up and down, the electrical current generated by a crystal changed in proportion to the loudness of the music.

数字媒体对音频的编码方式不同。计算机一直使用数字表示来读取程序和数据。使用位来表示声音在概念上很简单，但在实践和经济上却具有挑战性。贝尔实验室在 20 世纪 40 年代末率先实现了声音的数字化，旨在以加密形式进行数字传输（见图11.4）。Thomas Stockham 使用麻省理工学院的 TX-0 进行了将音频作为计算机数据存储和处理的首批实验。他后来创办了一家名为 Soundstream 的公司，将数字录音和重制商业化。该公司于 1976 年首次公开发行了一组已故歌剧男高音 Enrico Caruso 的录音，其中通过算法纠正了旧声学录音过程中的噪音和失真^。12

Digital media encoded audio differently. Computers had always used digital representations to read programs and data. Using bits to represent sound was conceptually simple, but practically and economically challenging. The digitization of sound had been pioneered by Bell Labs in the late 1940s, with a view to transmitting it digitally in encrypted form (see figure 11.4). Some of the first experiments in storing and manipulating audio as computer data were carried out by Thomas Stockham using the TX-0 at MIT. He went on to start a company, Soundstream, to commercialize digital recording and remastering. Its first public release in 1976 was a set of recordings by long dead opera tenor Enrico Caruso with the noise and distortions of the old acoustic recording process algorithmically corrected.¹²

语音合成，包括前面描述的 Speak & Spell 中使用的语音合成，是数字化音频的首批应用之一：每个音素持续一小段时间一秒钟，因此数字化不到一分钟的音频就可以提供产生语音所需的所有声音。1982 年，新闻播音员肯尼斯·肯德尔的声音被采样，作为 BBC 微型计算机可选语音合成升级的基础。它由两块芯片组成：一个德州仪器合成器和一个 ROM，其中保存着他优雅的音素和一些常用词。

Speech synthesis, including that used in the Speak & Spell described previously, was one of the first applications of digitized audio: each phoneme lasted for a fraction of a second, so digitizing less than a minute of audio would give all the sounds needed to produce speech. In 1982, newsreader Kenneth Kendell had his voice sampled as the basis for an optional speech synthesis upgrade for the BBC microcomputer. It consisted of two chips: a Texas Instruments synthesizer and a ROM holding his elegant phonemes and a selection of common words.

波表合成器采用类似于音素的录音库，并根据需要对其进行操作，以创建弹奏琴键时所需的特定音符和效果。该技术由 Fairlight 商业化，该公司于 1979 年推出的第一台计算机乐器售价数万美元（图 11.5）。计算机标签是应得的：每台乐器都包含两个摩托罗拉处理器，可以用光笔触摸屏幕来编辑波形。

Wave table synthesizers took a library of recorded sounds, analogous to phonemes, and manipulated them as needed to create the particular notes and effects needed when a key was played. The technique was commercialized by Fairlight, whose first Computer Musical Instruments introduced in 1979 cost tens of thousands of dollars (figure 11.5). The computer tag was earned: each instrument included two Motorola processors, and waveforms could be edited by touching a screen with a light pen.

采样并不总是用来模仿传统乐器。任何声音，从瓶子破碎的声音到婴儿的哭声，都可以被采样并用作新乐器。一些来自经典唱片（尤其是灵魂乐）的鼓声和声乐元素被广泛采样并重新出现在数百首音乐中。音乐家们利用采样将电影或政治演讲的片段融入他们的录音中。

Sampling was not always used to mimic conventional instruments. Any sound, from the breaking of a bottle to a baby’s wail, could be sampled and used as a new instrument. Some drum sounds and vocal elements from classic recordings, particularly soul music, were widely sampled and reappeared in hundreds of pieces of music. Musicians used sampling to incorporate snippets from movies or political speeches into their recordings.

到 21 世纪初，无需调音的数码钢琴已基本取代了传统家用钢琴。数码钢琴配有全尺寸钢琴键盘，但使用波表合成器而不是琴弦和琴槌演奏音乐。只有最优质的真正的钢琴保留了相当高的转售价值；其他的钢琴则被其主人送进了废品堆。

By the early 2000s, digital pianos, which never need tuning, had largely displaced traditional home pianos. A digital piano has a full-size piano keyboard but makes music with wave table synthesis rather than with strings and hammers. Only the finest real pianos retained significant resale value; others went to the scrap heap at their owners’ expense.

光盘

Compact Discs

向公众出售数字音乐唱片需要一种新的介质，这种介质必须能够存储与数十个 IBM PC AT 硬盘驱动器一样多的数据，但价格要足够便宜，比黑胶唱片略高。这种不太可能的属性组合定义了光盘，这是第一种进入普通家庭的数字媒体设备。每个闪亮的塑料光盘包含数百万个微小的凹坑，编码了超过一小时的音乐。激光束扫描它们，随着光盘的旋转，它们会向外螺旋移动。这些凹坑将声音编码为一系列 16 位数字，提供超过 65,000 个可能的值。它的音量每秒采样 44,100 次，因此可以再现高达 22,000 赫兹的音频频率 - 符合人类听觉的典型极限。目录数据对曲目的位置进行编码，以便听众可以几乎立即跳到某首歌曲。

Selling digital music recordings to the public would require a new medium that was able to store as much data as several dozen IBM PC AT hard disk drives but cheap enough to sell for a modest premium over a vinyl record. That unlikely combination of attributes defined the compact disc, the first digital media device to reach ordinary households. Each shiny plastic disc contained millions of tiny pits, encoding more than an hour of music. A laser beam scanned them, tracking a spiral outward as the disc rotated. These pits encode sound as a series of 16-bit numbers, giving more than 65,000 possible values. Its volume was sampled 44,100 times a second and so could reproduce audio frequencies up to 22,000 hertz—matching the typical limit of human hearing. Catalog data coded the position of tracks, so that listeners could skip almost instantly to a particular song.

第一台 CD 播放器是索尼的一款机型，售价约为 900 美元。最初的销售对象是技术爱好者和高保真发烧友。高保真发烧友投入巨资改进技术，以尽量减少声音再现中固有的失真：带有更好磁铁和更平稳马达的转盘、带有更高级电子设备的放大器、带有更高级磁性材料的磁带，甚至还有用于将电流引入扬声器的豪华电缆。与这些相比，CD 播放器是一种非常划算的升级。1983 年，美国人购买了大约 30,000 台 CD 播放器。正如Stereophile在其播放器评论中所说，“我们收到的遥控型号将于 1983 年 3 月开始在商店上架，售价为 1000 美元。对于普通大众类型的唱片购买者来说，这是一笔惊人的费用，但对于任何习惯于花 1,000 美元买一个唱头、将其装在 1,000 美元的唱机臂上、再将其馈送到 1,000 美元的前置放大器的发烧友来说，这笔开支并不大。” ¹³评论者惊叹于它几乎没有背景噪音，并指出“每一位听过这个系统的严肃音乐听众都会立刻爱上它的声音。”

The first CD player, a Sony model, cost around $900. Initial sales were to technology enthusiasts and hi-fi obsessives. Hi-fi enthusiasts invested huge sums in improved technology to minimize the distortions inherent in sound reproduction: turntables with better magnets and smoother motors, amplifiers with superior electronics, tapes with superior magnetic materials, and even luxury cables to run current into speakers. Compared to those, a CD player was a very cost-effective upgrade. During 1983, Americans purchased around 30,000 CD players. As Stereophile put it in its review of the player, “The remote-controlled model which we received will sell for $1000 when it starts appearing in stores in March ’83. This is a staggering cost for your John Q Public type record buyer, but a modest outlay for any audiophile accustomed to the idea of shelling out $1000 for a cartridge to put in a $1000 arm on a $1000 turntable and feed to a $1000 preamp.”¹³ The reviewer marveled at its lack of background noise, noting that “every serious music listener who heard this system fell instantly in love with the sound of it.”

该机器最新颖的部分是其数模转换功能，由一组四块索尼定制芯片处理。大多数 CD 播放器的操作由微处理器控制——将处理器与少量内存和其他必要功能集成到一个封装中的芯片——运行刻录在 ROM 芯片上的控制程序。

The most novel part of the machine was its digital-to-analog conversion, handled by a set of four custom Sony chips. The operations of most CD players were controlled by microprocessors—chips that combined processors with small amounts of memory and other necessary capabilities into a single package—running control programs burned onto ROM chips.

1985 年，第一张销量突破百万的光盘是Dire Straits 的《Brothers in Arms》。随着 CD 播放器成为家庭娱乐中心的必备品，其设计也从 20 世纪 70 年代的木质和金属装饰转变为黑色塑料和闪烁的 LED 灯条的新美学。立体声音响系统上出现了粗体字母和装饰性方块图，让它们看起来像是低成本科幻节目中的道具。到 1988 年，CD 的销量超过了黑胶唱片。

The first disc to sell a million copies, in 1985, was Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. As CD players became a fixture of home entertainment centers, their design shifted from the wood and metal trim of the 1970s to a new aesthetic of black plastic and flickering LED bars. Bold letters and decorative block diagrams appeared on stereo systems, giving them the look of props from a low-budget science fiction show. By 1988, CDs were outselling vinyl records.

数字编码

Digital Encoding

由于其数字特性，光盘被宣传为不会出现划痕、灰尘和腐蚀，而这些都会逐渐降低黑胶唱片的质量。1981 年，英国广播公司 (BBC) 节目《明日世界》的一位主持人向英国人介绍了光盘，他用一块尖锐的石头砸光盘，以证明其韧性，这让人印象深刻。一位早餐电视节目主持人在光盘上涂上蜂蜜，然后往上面倒咖啡。这些说法有些夸张——事实上，一个指纹或一个小划痕就可能导致光盘无法播放。

Thanks to their digital nature, compact discs were promoted as immune to the scratches, dust, and erosion that gradually degraded the quality of vinyl records. In 1981, a presenter of the BBC program Tomorrow’s World introducing them to Britain, memorably attacked one with a sharp stone to demonstrate its resilience. A breakfast television presenter spread honey on a disc and poured coffee over it. These claims were exaggerated—in fact a fingerprint or small scratch could prevent a disk from playing.

然而，CD 的失败确实不同于模拟媒体，原因有二。首先，阈值：激光传感机制只需要确定每个位置上是否存在凹坑（留下平面）。即使凹坑比预期的稍深或稍浅，或者激光的频率略有偏差，只要每个凹坑都能与平面区分开来，光盘仍然可以完美读取。相比之下，即使是最昂贵的转盘在将唱片的凹槽转换成电脉冲时也会引起一些失真。

Yet CDs did fail differently from analog media, for two reasons. First, thresholding: the laser sensing mechanisms needs only to determine whether a pit is present or absent (leaving a land) in each position. Even if the pit is a little deeper or shallower than intended or the laser is slightly off frequency, the disc can nevertheless be read perfectly if each pit can be distinguished from a land. In contrast, even the most expensive turntable will introduce some distortion when turning a record’s groove into electrical impulses.

另一个原因是冗余。数字化并没有什么神奇之处，可以防止划痕、制造缺陷或灰尘颗粒。有些位会被错误读取或根本读不出来。这些错误必须得到补偿。严格按照标准生产的音频 CD 可以录制长达 72 分钟的数字音乐数据。如果直接以一系列位的形式写入磁盘，这些数据将占用其容量的三分之一左右。另外三分之二提供冗余。音乐数据被分组为 24 字节的块，每个块使用称为交叉交错 Reed-Solomon 码 (CIRC) 的方案填充为 33 字节。额外的信息可用于检测错误和自动纠正误读位。当数据变成凹坑模式时，会添加更多的冗余，以便可以更可靠地读取：每个字节（八位数据）被编码为十四位（加上三个间隔位）。最终结果是 192 位音乐需要 588 个凹坑和凸面来存储。大多数其他数字媒体也采用了类似的技术，这解释了其普遍的可靠性。

The other reason is redundancy. There is nothing magical about digitality to protect from scratches, manufacturing defects, or dust particles. Some bits will be read incorrectly or not at all. Those errors must be compensated for. Audio CDs produced strictly according to the standard could record up to 72 minutes of digital music data. If written directly to the disk as a series of bits, that data would fill about one third of its capacity. The other two thirds provide redundancy. Music data is grouped into blocks of 24 bytes, each padded to 33 bytes using a scheme called cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon code (CIRC). The extra information allows for the detection of errors and the automatic correction of misread bits. More redundancy is added as the data is turned into patterns of pits so that it can be read more reliably: each byte (eight bits of data) is encoded as fourteen bits (plus three spacing bits). The net result is that 192 bits of music takes 588 pits and lands to store. Similar techniques are used with most other digital media and explain its general reliability.

音乐家反对数字化

Musicians against Digital

CD 的品牌宣传了其数字技术。每台播放器都必须显示一个标志，上面写着“Compact Disc Digital Audio”。早期的光盘，尤其是古典音乐光盘，通常印有字母“AAD”、“ADD”或“DDD”。第一个字母表示音乐最初是以模拟还是数字方式录制的格式，第二个是录音的混音方式。人们认为数字程度越高，音乐就越好，因为每次模拟操作都会引入嘶嘶声和失真^。14

The branding for CDs flaunted their digital technology. Each player was required to display a logo reading “Compact Disc Digital Audio.” Early discs, particularly for classical music, were often stamped with the letters “AAD,” “ADD,” or “DDD.” The first letter specified whether the music had initially been recorded in an analog or digital format, and the second how the recording had been mixed. The assumption was that more digitality meant better music, as each analog operation would introduce hiss and distortion.¹⁴

许多早期的 CD 混音和编码质量很差，远远达不到其音质的理论极限，而且从主观上讲，缺乏“温暖”或“深度”等品质。婴儿潮一代最成功的表演者之一尼尔杨 (Neil Young) 尤其对此持批评态度。他有时被认为组织了一个名为“音乐家反对数字”的团体（显然是模仿尼尔戴蒙德 (Neil Diamond) 的“音乐家反对毒品”）。杨抱怨说“听起来不对劲。……第一次，‘嘿——没有嘶嘶声，哇，太棒了。直到过了一会儿你才意识到没有声音。’” ¹⁵这场冲突是科学与浪漫的冲突。正如杨所说，“思想被欺骗了，但内心却很悲伤。” 更高分辨率的数字音频光盘格式于 1990 年代末推出，但很少有人接受。杨自己的无压缩数字音频播放器于 2014 年推出，也没有受到欢迎。

Many early CDs were poorly mixed and encoded, falling far short of the theoretical limitations on their audio quality and, more subjectively, lacking qualities such as “warmth” or “depth.” Neil Young, one of the most successful performers of the baby boomer generation, was particularly critical. He is sometimes credited with organizing a group called Musicians Against Digital (an apparent parody of Neil Diamond’s Musicians Against Drugs). Young complained that “Shit doesn’t sound right.… The first time, ‘Hey—no hiss, wow, great. You didn’t realize there was no sound until a little while later.”¹⁵ The clash is one of science versus romance. As Young put it, “The mind has been tricked, but the heart is sad.” Higher resolution digital audio disc formats were introduced at the end of the 1990s but found few takers. Neither did Young’s own compression-free digital audio player, launched in 2014.

相反，正如我们接下来要讨论的，2000 年代的主流音乐消费转向了高度压缩的数据文件，这些文件听起来比 CD 差很多。继续花费数千美元购买扬声器线的发烧友自然对此感到震惊。许多人仍然迷恋模拟音频。最昂贵的现代高保真设备基于古董技术，从以微观精度设计的极简主义转盘到摒弃晶体管而采用真空管的放大器，真空管像宝石一样镶嵌在精致的金属笼子里。

Instead, as we discuss next, mainstream music consumption in the 2000s shifted toward highly compressed data files that sounded significantly worse than CDs. Audiophiles, who continue to spend thousands of dollars on speaker wire, were naturally appalled. Many still fetishize analog audio. The most expensive pieces of modern hi-fi equipment are based on antique technology, from minimalist turntables engineered with microscopic precision to amplifiers that eschew transistors in favor of vacuum tubes flaunted like precious stones in elaborate metal cages.

光盘

CD-ROM

CD 上用于存储数据的格式CD-ROM的商业化时间比最初预期的要长。CD 存储数字数据，但仅仅在立体声连接器旁安装数字输出是不够的。每个计算机数据字节都必须正确检索，否则根本无法检索。相比之下，音乐 CD 播放器在遇到瞬时读取错误时，会根据之前和之后存储的声音来弥补（插入）数据以填补空白。CD-ROM 需要额外的冗余和纠错数据级别。当最终于 1988 年标准化时，CD-ROM 允许的最大数据存储量约为 680 MB，而当时 PC 硬盘驱动器甚至无法存储这个数据量的十分之一^。16

The format for storing data on CDs, CD-ROM, took longer to commercialize than originally expected. CDs store digital data, but it wasn’t enough simply to install a digital output alongside the stereo connectors. Each byte of computer data must be retrieved correctly or not at all. In contrast, music CD players facing a momentary read error made up (interpolated) data to fill in the gap on the basis of the sound stored before and after it. CD-ROMs needed additional levels of redundancy and error-correction data. When finally standardized in 1988, CD-ROM allowed for a maximum data storage of around 680 MB, at a time when PC hard drives could rarely store even a tenth of that much data.¹⁶

技术进步很快。早期的 CD-ROM 播放器是连接到特殊接口卡的笨重外部设备。它们面向专业用户：需要访问大型数据库的学校、图书馆和公司。到 20 世纪 90 年代中期，内置驱动器成为标准硬件，只会增加台式计算机成本的一小部分。到 20 世纪 90 年代末，它们已经缩小到可以装入笔记本电脑中。第一台 CD-ROM 驱动器以相同的速度旋转光盘音频 CD 播放器的速度比硬盘快得多，这使得它们检索数据的速度明显慢于硬盘。在十分钟内播放一曲交响乐并没有什么意义，但对于数据，检索速度越快越好。到 1994 年，硬盘的速度达到了 4 倍。

The technology improved fast. Early CD-ROM players were bulky external units hooked up to special interface cards. They were aimed at specialist users: schools, libraries, and corporations needing to access large databases. By the mid-1990s, internal drives were becoming standard hardware that added only a small amount to the cost of a desktop computer. By the late 1990s they had shrunk enough to be fitted inside laptop computers, too. The first CD-ROM drives spun discs at the same speed as audio CD players, which made them significantly slower than hard drives to retrieve data. There wasn’t much point in spinning faster to play a symphony in ten minutes, but with data, faster retrieval was usually better. Drives reached 4X speed by 1994.

数据库和庞大的参考书目是新磁盘的明显用途。《大英百科全书》有 32 卷厚厚的卷，内容细小，重量超过 130 磅。这是一次令人向往的购买，上门推销人员大力推广，但很少有家庭能合理地为参考书目投入 1,400 美元和 5 英尺的书架空间。1989 年，大英百科全书推出了其不那么有名的康普顿百科全书的多媒体 CD-ROM 版本。所有 26 卷的文字和图片都装在一张光盘上，还有条目、动画和声音之间的超链接。微软的竞争对手 Encarta 是鲜为人知的 Funk & Wagnall 百科全书的华丽更新，1993 年作为新 Microsoft Home CD-ROM 产品系列的一部分首次亮相时售价为 395 美元。竞争非常激烈，而且由于光盘与印刷书籍不同，生产成本几乎为零，因此价格很快就下降了。两年之内，Encarta 就开始随 CD-ROM 驱动器和新 PC 一起免费赠送。

Databases and bulky reference works were an obvious use for the new disks. The Encyclopedia Britannica filled 32 hefty volumes with tiny text, weighing over a hundred thirty pounds. It was an aspirational purchase, heavily promoted by door-to-door sales people, but few families could rationally commit $1,400 and five feet of shelf space to a reference work. In 1989, Britannica launched a multimedia CD-ROM version of its less prestigious Compton’s encyclopedia. The text and pictures of all 26 volumes fitted on one disc, together with hyperlinks between entries, animations, and sounds. Microsoft’s rival Encarta, a flashy update of the obscure Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedia, listed for $395 on its debut in 1993 as part of the new Microsoft Home lineup of CD-ROM products. Competition was fierce, and as discs cost almost nothing to produce, unlike printed books, it quickly drove down prices. Within two years Encarta was being given away with CD-ROM drives and new PCs.

所有这些光盘空间的另一个明显用途是视频。Windows 95 内置了视频解压缩和播放功能，为了展示此功能，CD 中收录了 Weezer、Sheryl Crow 和 Edie Brickell 的高质量音乐视频。数字化视频也开始出现在视频游戏中，无论是在个人电脑还是游戏机上。世嘉率先为其广受欢迎的 Genesis 游戏机配备了附加 CD 播放器，该游戏机于 1992 年在美国推出。到 1995 年，游戏机将 CD-ROM 驱动器作为标准功能，这样就可以在便宜、大容量的光盘上播放游戏，而不必使用昂贵且容量有限的卡带。捕捉到的视频用于游戏动作的中场休息。史诗般的太空战斗游戏《银河飞将 III：虎王之心》于 1994 年底发布，包含分布在四张光盘上的超过三个半小时的视频。《娱乐周刊》称，它“相对于之前的 CD-ROM 游戏而言，就像《星球大战》相对于之前的科幻电影而言一样，是一个巨大飞跃”，以此来赞扬马克·哈米尔在这两部电影中的主演作用。17 ^CD上数字化视频的另一种流行用途是色情内容。

The other obvious use for all that disc space was video. Video decompression and playback was built into Windows 95, and to show it off the CD included high-quality music videos from Weezer, Sheryl Crow, and Edie Brickell. Digitized video also began to appear in video games, on both PCs and game consoles. Sega led the way with an add-on CD player for its popular Genesis console, launched in 1992 in the US. By 1995, consoles included CD-ROM drives as standard features so that games could be supplied on cheap, voluminous discs rather than expensive and limited cartridges. Captured video was used for intermissions in the game action. The epic space combat game Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, released at the end of 1994, included more than three and a half hours of video spread over four discs. Entertainment Weekly said it made “as great a leap over previous CD-ROM games as Star Wars did over previous science-fiction movies,” in a nod to Mark Hamill’s starring role in both.¹⁷ The other popular use for digitized video on CD was pornography.

CD 驱动器普及后，它们成为程序分发的默认介质，取代了存放复杂软件所需的大量软盘。软盘驱动器使用越来越少，在 21 世纪初从新电脑中消失。Windows 95 是第一个主要通过 CD 分发的版本。那些要求软盘副本的人将收到 13 张以特殊高容量格式录制的磁盘。高容量替代品，主要是 Iomega ZIP 驱动器，在 20 世纪 90 年代末很受欢迎，但被能够将数据写入（刻录）到磁盘以及读取数据的新型 CD 驱动器所取代。

Once CD drives became common they became the default medium for program distribution, replacing the ever larger stacks of floppy disks needed to hold complex software. Floppy disk drives were less and less used, disappearing from new computers in the early 2000s. Windows 95 was the first version to be distributed primarily on CD. Those requesting a copy on floppy disk would receive thirteen disks recorded in a special high-capacity format. High-capacity alternatives, primarily the Iomega ZIP drive, were popular in the late 1990s but were killed by newer CD drives able to write (burn) data onto disks as well as read it.

通过传真传送文件

Document Transmission by Fax

如今，我们通常以计算机文件的形式传输文档。早在 20 世纪 80 年代，电子文档传输在技术上就已经可行，可以使用企业内部网络或公共在线服务上传和下载文件。但实际上，接收者不太可能拥有检索文件所需的硬件、软件和技能。

Today we usually transmit documents as computer files. Electronic document transmission was technically possible back in the 1980s, uploading and downloading files using corporate internal networks or public online services. But in practice, a recipient was unlikely to have the hardware, software, and skills needed to retrieve the file.

相反，企业采用了传真机：一种结合了扫描仪、调制解调器和打印机的廉价专用计算机。传真机的工作原理与复印机类似，但打印副本的纸张可能在世界的另一端。传真机利用了现有的电话基础设施和拨打电话号码的熟悉度。大多数企业订购了一条额外的线路，让传真机保持开启状态并设置为接听电话。用户需要支付通话费用，但发送信件或销售订单时，传真比邮政服务快得多，也比联邦快递等服务的隔夜送达便宜得多。传真对国际贸易的扩展尤为重要，例如，小型 PC 组装商可以直接从台湾订购零部件。

Instead, businesses adopted fax (short for facsimile) machines: cheap special purpose computers combining a scanner, modem, and printer. These worked like copiers, but the paper on which the copy was printed might be on the other side of the world. Fax machines took advantage of the existing telephone infrastructure and the familiarity of dialing a phone number. Most businesses ordered an extra line and left the fax machine turned on and set to answer calls. Users paid for the call, but to send a letter or sales order a fax was much faster than a postal service and much cheaper than overnight delivery with a service like FedEx. Fax was particularly important to the expansion of international trade, for example, by letting small PC assemblers order components directly from Taiwan.

电子传输图片并不是什么新鲜事。自 20 世纪 20 年代以来，摄影记者就一直使用有线传输（通过公共电话线）将图片从报社传到报社。这些模拟机器将照片固定在鼓上，并以螺旋形模式扫描。正如历史学家乔纳森·库珀史密斯 (Jonathan Coopersmith) 所指出的那样，企业家们一直在努力将传真传输转变为一种通用的商业文件传递方式。到 20 世纪 60 年代，施乐公司推出了可行的服务，但由于其模拟机器采用高精度组件制造，因此价格过于昂贵，无法真正起飞^。18

There was nothing new about the electronic transmission of pictures. Since the 1920s, photojournalists had used wire transmission, over public telephone lines, to rush images from and to newspaper offices. Those analog machines fixed the photograph to a drum and scanned it in a spiral pattern. As historian Jonathan Coopersmith has shown, entrepreneurs had been trying just as long to turn facsimile transmission into a general-purpose method for delivering business documents. By the 1960s Xerox had a viable service, but because its analog machines were built around high-precision components, they remained too expensive to really take off.¹⁸

相比之下，20 世纪 80 年代大众市场的传真机采用与家用电脑和视频游戏机相同的模块制造：微处理器、刻录有软件的 ROM 芯片和 RAM 芯片。这些组件被包装成电话（带键盘和听筒）和复印机的混合体。大多数新机器使用廉价、安静的热敏打印机将图像刻录到一卷闪亮的纸上。

In contrast, the mass market fax machines of the 1980s were built with the same blocks as home computers and video game consoles: microprocessors, ROM chips with software burned on them, and RAM chips. These components were packaged to appear as a hybrid of a telephone (with a keypad and handset) and a copier. Most of the new machines used cheap, quiet, thermal printing mechanisms to burn images onto a roll of shiny paper.

传真机拨了一个号码，并试图与接电话的机器协商，发出第一声尖叫声和哔哔声，以便用户确认接电话的人不是愤怒的人。然后噪音停止了，它开始慢慢地将文件拖过扫描头。这台机器使用标准方法定义第 3 组数字编码方案是国际电信联盟于 1977 年为传真机发明的，它对页面进行了编码并传输，以确保接收机器能够理解传输的内容。第 3 组数字编码方案是日本在廉价微处理器的潜力下于 1977 年发明的，库珀史密斯称之为“1843 年以来传真史上最重要的事件”。第 3 组对每页扫描内容进行压缩，仅需 15 秒即可进行数字传输，比早期需要 6 分钟的模拟传真机快得多。当 1980 年第 3 组正式被接受时，美国大约有 25 万台传真机在使用。到 1990 年，这一数字达到 500 万台。19^在日本，传真的使用更为广泛，因为书面日语很难在电报、电传或电子邮件中表示，但以图像形式传输却很容易。

The fax machine dialed a number and tried to negotiate with the machine that answered, sharing its first shrieks and beeps so that its user could verify that the call was not answered by an irate human. Then the noises stopped and it began dragging the document slowly past its scanner head. The machine used standard methods defined by the International Telecommunications Union to encode and transmit pages, ensuring that the receiving machine would be able to understand the transmission. The Group 3 digital coding scheme was devised in 1977 in Japan around the potential of cheap microprocessors, in what Coopersmith called “the most important event in fax history since 1843.” Group 3 compressed each scanned page to transmit digitally in as little as fifteen seconds, much faster than earlier analog fax machines taking up to six minutes. When it was formally accepted in 1980, about 250,000 fax machines were in use in the United States. By 1990 there were five million.¹⁹ In Japan, fax was even more widely used, as written Japanese was hard to represent in telegram, telex, or email but easy to transmit as an image.

由于机器的机械结构简单，其定价取决于计算机芯片和电子扫描仪的成本，而这些成本迅速下降。电子创新、基于标准的竞争和规模经济使一台基本机器的成本从 1983 年的 7,000 多美元降至 1985 年底的不到 1,000 美元^。20

As the machines were mechanically simple, their pricing depended on the costs of computer chips and the electronic scanner, which fell rapidly. Electronic innovations, competition based on standards, and economies of scale drove down the cost of a basic machine from more than $7,000 in 1983 to less than $1,000 by the end of 1985.²⁰

当传真功能内置于计算机和调制解调器中时，它们的价格甚至更低。20 世纪 80 年代末，PC 传真板首次面世时，价格高达数百美元，但几年之内，调制解调器生产商购买的芯片组就将传真功能作为标准功能。WinFax（于 1990 年推出）添加了虚拟传真机作为打印机选项，可用于任何 Windows 程序。它卖得很好，直到微软将此功能作为标准功能纳入 Windows 95。公司安装了传真服务器，这样整个办公室就可以通过局域网共享一台或两台传真调制解调器。互联网流行起来后，类似的服务也向公众提供，例如，文档的收件人列表可以同时包含电子邮件地址和传真号码。高速数字复印机也添加了传真功能，这些复印机与消费级传真机一样，是具有打印和扫描功能的计算机。

Fax capabilities got even cheaper when they were built into computers and modems. PC fax boards cost hundreds of dollars when they first appeared in the late 1980s, but within a couple of years the chipsets purchased by modem producers included fax capabilities as a standard feature. WinFax (introduced in 1990) added a virtual fax machine as a printer option available to any Windows program. It sold well, until Microsoft made that capability part of Windows 95 as a standard feature. Corporations installed fax servers, so that an entire office could share one or two fax modems via the local area network. Once the Internet became popular, similar services were offered to the public, so that, for example, the list of recipients for a document could include both email addresses and fax numbers. Fax capabilities were also added to high-speed digital copiers which, like consumer fax machines, were computers coupled with printing and scanning capabilities.

21 世纪初，电子邮件附件和文件上传开始取代传真，但传真仍未完全消失。2018 年，英国政府宣布禁止在国家医疗服务体系中使用传真机，该禁令将于 2020 年生效。目前英国国家医疗服务体系中剩下的 9,000 台传真机并非全部都受到监控，这对发送紧急医疗信息的人来说是个问题，而且传真机也不能保护患者的隐私^。21

In the early 2000s, email attachments and file uploads began to displace fax usage, but it has still not vanished completely. In 2018, the British government announced a ban on fax machines in its National Health Service, effective 2020. Not all of its nine thousand remaining machines were monitored, a problem for anyone sending urgent medical information, and the machines could not be counted on to protect patient privacy.²¹

扫描仪

Scanners

制造廉价传真机的技术也应用在廉价扫描仪上。有些型号是手持式的，像一只超大鼠标一样在纸上拖动，而另一些型号则像传真机中的扫描仪一样使用滚筒。大多数然而，是平板扫描仪——纸张静止地放在玻璃上，而扫描装置在其下方移动。

The same technologies that made cheap fax machines possible made their way into cheap scanners. Some models were handheld and dragged over paper like an oversized mouse, and others worked with a drum like the scanners in fax machines. Most, however, were flatbed scanners—the paper remained still on a piece of glass while the scanning mechanism moved below it.

20 世纪 80 年代末，扫描仪与 Macintosh 电脑、PageMaker 软件和激光打印机一样，是桌面出版业务中很受欢迎但价格昂贵的部分。到 20 世纪 90 年代中期，彩色扫描仪的价格已降至几百美元，硬盘容量足以容纳大量图片集。扫描仪成为流行的消费者附加设备，家庭开始将照片集数字化。

Scanners were a popular, but expensive, part of desktop publishing operations in the late 1980s, along with Macintosh computers, PageMaker software, and laser printers. By the mid-1990s, the price of color scanners had dropped to a few hundred dollars and hard drives were big enough to hold large image collections. Scanners became popular consumer add-ons, and families began to digitize their photo collections.

工业级扫描仪可让企业扫描并销毁收到的纸质文件，将其转换为电子图像。互联网档案馆和谷歌图书项目等组织使用配有翻页装置的专用扫描仪将整个图书馆藏书数字化。

Industrial grade scanners let businesses scan and destroy incoming paperwork, converting it to electronic images. Specialist scanners, fitted with devices to turn pages, were used to digitize entire library collections by groups such as the Internet Archive and Google’s Books project.

扫描的直接结果是文件的数字图片。使用光学字符识别(OCR) 软件可以将其转换为可搜索或可编辑的文本。自 20 世纪 60 年代以来，银行机器一直在定期读取支票上的账户和分类代码，但这只是因为它们是用磁性墨水打印的，使用一种特殊的字体，夸大了数字之间的差异。

The direct result of scanning is a digital picture of the document. Using software for optical character recognition (OCR) makes it possible to turn this into searchable or editable text. Since the 1960s, bank machines had routinely been reading account and sorting codes on checks, but only because they were printed in magnetic ink using a special typeface that exaggerated the differences between numbers.

阅读不同字体的普通印刷品是一项艰巨得多的挑战。这项挑战最早在 20 世纪 70 年代中期由雷蒙德·库兹韦尔发明的阅读机实现。阅读机将计算机与平板扫描仪和语音合成器连接起来。这台设备体积庞大且价格昂贵，但却为视障用户带来了以前无论花多少钱都无法获得的独立性。这只是利用计算机技术造福残障用户的一个例子。正如历史学家伊丽莎白·R·佩特里克所指出的那样，早期个人计算机的修补文化包括对计算机的改造，例如，为无法使用传统键盘的用户使用替代控制方法。计算机还可以通过编程来控制其他设备，例如轮椅^。22

Reading normal print in different typefaces was a much harder challenge. It was first done commercially in the mid-1970s by the reading machine invented by Raymond Kurzweil. This hooked a computer to a flatbed scanner to a speech synthesizer. The equipment was bulky and very expensive but promised visually impaired users an independence previously unavailable at any price. This was just one example of the uptake of computer technology to benefit disabled users. As historian Elizabeth R. Petrick has shown, the culture of tinkering that surrounded early personal computers included their adaptation, for example, to use alternative control methods for users unable to work with conventional keyboards. Computers could also be programmed to control other devices, such as wheelchairs.²²

和许多其他最初由残障用户采用的技术一样，OCR 最终被证明对更广泛的人群有用。20 世纪 80 年代末的 OCR 软件，例如 Apple Macintosh 的 OmniPage，仍然速度缓慢且繁琐，需要大量手动更正。23^随着计算机功能越来越强大，该功能变得越来越有用，最终被内置到 Adob​​e 流行的 Acrobat 软件中，以便扫描的文档可以轻松转换为可搜索的 PDF 文件。

Like many other technologies first adopted by disabled users, OCR eventually proved useful to broader populations. OCR software of the late 1980s, such as OmniPage for the Apple Macintosh, remained slow and fiddly, requiring many manual corrections.²³ As computers grew more powerful, the capability became more useful, and it was eventually built into Adobe’s popular Acrobat software so that scanned documents could easily be converted into searchable PDF files.

数码相机

Digital Cameras

将图片表示为点阵的想法并不新鲜。早期的电视摄像机通过将光聚焦到光收集元件的网格（或马赛克）上来捕捉图像，然后用电子束扫描。1945 年，约翰·冯·诺依曼在研究EDVAC 设计的第一稿时，对以下技术潜力非常着迷：图像显像管，一种当时用于电视摄像机的电子管，用作存储设备。甚至随着数字图像的过渡而引入的术语“像素”也是“图像元素”的缩写，该术语自实验电视的早期开始使用。

There was nothing new about the idea of representing a picture as a grid of dots. Early television cameras captured images by focusing light onto a grid (or mosaic) of light-collecting elements that was then scanned by an electron beam. In 1945, working on the First Draft EDVAC design, John von Neumann was fascinated by the potential of the iconoscope, an electronic tube then used in television cameras, as a storage device. Even the term pixel, introduced with the transition to digital images, was a contraction of picture element, a term used since the early days of experimental television.

然而，在电视中，每个点的强度都以模拟值的形式传输，并模糊地再现为连续线的一部分。使用计算机处理视频需要将这些强度转换为数字，这是称为帧抓取器的奇特设备的工作。它从视频输入中捕获单个帧并将其转换为位图图像。帧抓取器用于视频制作工作，并内置于专门的视频处理硬件中以创建特效。这些设备价格昂贵，主要由视频制作公司购买，以通过标题和特效为音乐视频、广告和婚礼录像增添活力。相关硬件同步锁相器将计算机显示器与其他视频源同步，以便可以添加计算机生成的标题和图形^。24

In television, however, intensity of each point was transmitted as an analog value and reproduced, fuzzily, as part of a continuous line. Manipulating video with a computer required turning those intensities into numbers, the job of an exotic device called a frame grabber. This captured a single frame from a video input and turned it into a bitmap image. Frame grabbers were used for video production work and were built into specialist video manipulation hardware to create special effects. These devices were expensive, purchased mostly by video production companies to enliven music videos, advertisements, and wedding footage with titles and special effects. A related piece of hardware, the gen lock, synchronized computer displays with other video feeds so that computer-generated titles and graphics could be added.²⁴

如今，数字视频传感器无处不在。关键的进展是电荷耦合器件 (CCD)，它将半导体与感光层结合在一起。1974 年，仙童半导体公司开始销售 100 × 100 光传感器。这为柯达的实验性数码相机奠定了基础。当光线聚焦到传感器矩阵上时，就可以从芯片上读取数字。太空任务特别需要微型可靠的数字成像技术，以创建可以传回地球的图片。20 世纪 60 年代开发的技术最初用于间谍卫星，用于曝光胶片，然后扫描胶片并以数字方式将图像传回地球。能够直接拍摄高质量的数字静态图像要简单得多，也快得多。到 1978 年，KH-11 间谍卫星使用的 CCD 据说分辨率为 800 × 800。25 ¹⁹⁸⁶年发射的哈勃太空望远镜使用了类似尺寸的镜子，但让分辨率高得多的 CCD 传感器得到了非常公开的展示。^二十六

Today digital video sensors are everywhere. The crucial development was the charged coupled device (CCD), which combined a semiconductor with a light-sensitive layer. Fairchild Semiconductor began to sell a 100×100 light sensor in 1974. That provided the basis for an experimental digital camera at Kodak. When light was focused onto the sensor matrix, numbers could be read off the chip. Space missions had a particular need for tiny and reliable digital imaging technologies, creating pictures that could be beamed back to Earth. Techniques had been developed in the 1960s, originally for spy satellites, to expose film and then scan it and transmit images digitally back to earth. Being able to take high-quality digital still images directly was much simpler and faster. By 1978, a KH-11 spy satellite was using a CCD that reportedly had an 800×800 resolution.²⁵ The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1986, used a similarly sized mirror but gave much higher resolution CCD sensors a very public showcase.²⁶

回到地球上，第一个大市场是能够扫描单行的廉价一维传感器。平板扫描仪和传真机将扫描仪在页面上移动，以逐渐捕获整个图像。（海盗号火星着陆器的光电二极管相机开创了类似的数字扫描方法。这种方法效果很好，尽管速度很慢，因为平台和景观都没有移动。）

Back on earth, the first big market was for cheaper one-dimensional sensors able to scan a single line. Flatbed scanners and fax machines moved the scanner across the page to capture the entire image gradually. (A similar digital scanning approach had been pioneered with the photo diode cameras of the Viking Mars landers. It worked well, albeit slowly, as neither the platform nor the landscape was moving.)

CCD 被用于 20 世纪 80 年代的一些模拟摄像机，这种笨重的设备将录像机和电视摄像机整合到一个盒子中。该技术于 1987 年在玩具公司 Fisher Price 生产的 PXL-2000 PixelVision 相机中短暂亮相。它将高度像素化的视频录制到标准录音带上，后来成为时尚艺术家的最爱^。27

CCDs were used in some of the analog camcorders of the 1980s, bulky devices that combined a video cassette recorder and a television camera into a single box. The technology made a brief consumer appearance in 1987, in the PXL-2000 PixelVision camera produced by toy company Fisher Price. It recorded highly pixelated video onto standard audio cassettes, later becoming a favorite of hipster artists.²⁷

数码相机的商业化需要更长的时间，因为需要许多传感器元件才能一次捕捉整个图像。到 20 世纪 90 年代中期，更高分辨率的传感器以及处理它们生成的大文件的芯片和内存正在变得越来越价格实惠。它们进入了两种相关产品领域。数字摄像机可以将一小时清晰的高分辨率镜头作为 13 GB 的计算机数据存储在特殊磁带上。配备 FireWire 连接的计算机可以提取数字视频，对其进行编辑，并将结果写回到磁带上，而不会造成任何质量损失。

Commercializing digital cameras took longer, because many sensor elements were needed to capture an entire image at once. By the mid-1990s, higher resolution sensors and the chips and memories to deal with the large files they produced were becoming affordable. They made their way into two related kinds of product. Digital video cameras could store one hour of crisp, high-resolution footage on special tapes as 13 gigabytes of computer data. Computers fitted with a FireWire connection could extract digital video, edit it, and write the results back to the tape without any loss of quality.

另一种数码相机模仿传统相机。相机制造商在像素方面展开竞争——传感器元件可处理多少百万像素。20 世纪 90 年代末，大多数相机的像素只有 100 万或 200 万像素，拍摄的图像在屏幕上看起来不错，但打印出来时会显得参差不齐。

The other kind of digital camera was patterned after traditional cameras. Camera manufacturers competed on megapixels—how many millions of pixels the sensor element handled. At the end of the 1990s, most had just one or two megapixels, capturing images that looked good on screen but would appear jagged when printed out.

由于它们针对静态图像进行了优化，占用的空间比视频要小，因此大多数相机都使用基于芯片的闪存卡而不是磁带（尽管一些早期型号使用软盘或 CD）。闪存在断电时会保留数据，但可以快速且有选择地覆盖。它由东芝于 1987 年推出，在计算机中找到了早期应用，用于存储计算机的配置设置并以易于更新的形式保存 BIOS 代码。早期数码相机中使用的卡只能存储几兆字节，但与其他内存芯片一样，随着晶体管的缩小，它们的容量上升到千兆字节。由于它非常紧凑且节能，大容量闪存是创造新便携式设备的关键技术。能够存储数百千兆字节的半导体存储器最终取代了大多数 PC 中的硬盘存储，尽管这比预期花费的时间更长，因为在 20 世纪 90 年代和 21 世纪初，磁盘容量的增长速度甚至快于芯片密度。

Because they were optimized for still images, which took less space than video, most cameras used chip-based flash memory cards rather than tape (though some early models used floppy disks or CDs). Flash retained data when power was turned off but could be quickly and selectively overwritten. It was introduced by Toshiba in 1987, finding early applications in computers to store configuration settings for computers and to hold BIOS code in an easily updatable form. The cards used in early digital cameras could store only a few megabytes but, as with other memory chips, their capacities rose into the gigabytes as transistors shrank. Because it was very compact and power efficient, high-capacity flash memory was a crucial enabling technology for the creation of new portable devices. Semiconductor memories able to store hundreds of gigabytes ultimately replaced hard disk storage in most PCs, although this took longer than expected because magnetic disk capacities increased even faster than chip densities during the 1990s and early 2000s.

20 世纪 90 年代末的数码相机体积庞大、屏幕较小，拍摄几十张照片后就会耗尽电池电量并填满存储卡。与几年后上市的机型相比，它们简直糟透了，但与之相关的是消费级胶卷相机。传统胶卷盒只能容纳 24 或 36 张照片。要看这些照片至少要花 10 美元，而且通常需要去三次药店——购买胶卷、送去冲洗，然后取回照片。袖珍相机迫使用户眯着眼睛透过塑料窗看，只能模糊地看到照片中可能出现的样子。更大、更昂贵的单镜头反光相机可以拍出更好的照片，并显示图像是否对焦。难怪大多数人只在度假旅行和特殊场合才拿出相机。

The digital cameras of the late 1990s were bulky, had small screens, and would deplete their batteries and fill their memory cards after taking just a few dozen images. Compared to the models available even a few years later, they were terrible, but the relevant comparison was with consumer film cameras. Conventional film cartridges held only 24 or 36 pictures. Seeing those pictures cost at least ten dollars and usually took three trips to a drugstore—to buy the film, to drop it off for processing, and to collect the prints. Pocket-sized cameras forced users to squint through a plastic window, giving a vague idea of what might appear in a photograph. Larger, more expensive single lens reflex cameras took better pictures and showed whether an image was in focus. Little wonder that most people took out their camera only for vacation trips and special occasions.

即使是最简单的数码相机也带来了新的摄影实践。对于需要拍摄图像并立即使用（用于房地产销售、公司通讯或身份证）的企业来说，数码相机的流行速度最快。它们的直接竞争对手是宝丽来即时相机，后者运行成本高，而且大多拍摄小照片。随着价格下降和图片质量提高，消费者开始购买数码相机，拍摄的照片数量比以往任何时候都多。现在度假用数百张照片捕捉，而不仅仅是一两卷胶卷。青少年可以模仿时尚摄影师的做法，为朋友拍几十张照片，然后选出最好的一张。自 21 世纪初以来，日常生活被视觉记录的规模在历史上是无与伦比的，这种现象被称为^无处不在的摄影。28

Even the most primitive digital cameras enabled new photographic practices. Digital cameras caught on fastest for business that needed to shoot images and use them immediately, for real estate sales, corporate newsletters, or identity cards. Their direct competition was Polaroid instant cameras, which had high running costs and mostly took small pictures. As prices dropped and picture quality improved, consumers began to buy digital cameras and to take far more pictures than ever before. Vacations were now captured with hundreds of pictures, not just one or two rolls of film. Teenagers could mimic the practices of fashion photographers by taking a few dozen shots of a friend and using the best one. Since the early 2000s, daily life has been visually recorded on a scale unmatched in earlier history, a phenomenon known as ubiquitous photography.²⁸

早期的存储卡只能容纳几兆字节，需要进行强力压缩才能容纳十几张图片。而这要归功于一种新的图像格式 JPEG（以联合图像专家组命名）。1991 年，当 libjpeg（一种广泛使用的 JPEG 压缩开源代码模块）发布时，需要一台功能强大的 PC 才能创建这些文件。到 20 世纪 90 年代末，相机已经具备了必要的计算机能力，尽管早期型号每张图片处理起来都要花上几秒钟。一旦存储卡满了，用户就可以将文件移动到计算机上。数码摄影是另一种做法，它是由拥有大容量硬盘的 PC 的出现而实现的，而大容量硬盘是中产阶级家庭的标准配置。想要打印照片的人仍然可以去药店或购买价格实惠的小型彩色打印机，但照片越来越多地在屏幕上查看。人们通过电子邮件与朋友和家人分享照片，或者将它们复制到 Zip 磁盘或刻录到 CD 上，而不是递上装满复印件的信封。

Early memory cards held only a few megabytes, needing aggressive compression to hold even a dozen images. That was provided by a new image format, the JPEG (named for the Joint Photographic Experts Group). In 1991, when libjpeg, a widely used open source code module for JPEG compression, was released, it took a powerful PC to create these files. By the late 1990s, the necessary computer power could be put into a camera, although early models would be tied up for several seconds processing each image. Once the memory card was full, users moved the files onto a computer. Digital photography was another of the practices made possible by the arrival of PCs with voluminous hard drives as a standard feature of middle-class households. People who wanted to print out their photographs could still go to the drug store or purchase an affordable little color printer, but photographs were viewed more and more on screens. They were shared with friends and family by email, or by copying them onto a Zip disk or burning them onto a CD, rather than by handing over an envelope full of duplicate prints.

屏幕变大了，图像更清晰了，电池寿命更长了，相机机身变小了，传感器也更好了。到 21 世纪初，传感器的像素达到十几百万，这意味着图像质量主要受相机​​光学元件质量的限制。相机开始使用一种不同的传感器技术，即 CMOS，以其所基于的芯片技术命名。CMOS 成像的原型是在喷气推进实验室开发的，用于深空探测器。新技术生产的相机传感器比基于 CCD 的传感器更便宜、更小、功耗更低。到 2006 年，一台售价数百美元的相机可以装进裤袋，无需更换电池或存储卡即可拍摄数百张照片，并且比任何紧凑型胶卷消费相机的图像质量都要好。在弱光条件下（在夜间或室内不使用闪光灯拍照）的改进尤其显著。

Screens got bigger, images sharper, battery life longer, camera bodies smaller, and sensors better. By the early 2000s, the adoption of sensors with a dozen megapixels meant that image quality was limited primarily by the quality of the camera’s optics. Cameras began to use a different sensor technology, called CMOS after the chip technology on which it is based. CMOS imaging was prototyped at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for use on deep space probes. The new technology produced camera sensors that were cheaper, smaller, and lower powered than those based on CCDs. By 2006, a camera costing a few hundred dollars would fit in a trouser pocket, take hundreds of images without changing a battery or a memory card, and offer better image quality than any compact film-based consumer camera. Improvements under low light conditions—taking photographs at night or indoors without a flash—were particularly dramatic.

数字视频

Digital Video

相机并不是唯一一款被悄悄改造成电脑的消费电子产品。电视和视频播放器也经历了同样的过程。自 20 世纪 50 年代以来，美国的电视画面一直以 483 条扫描线的形式传输，这些扫描线水平排列在屏幕上。与此同时，电视的体积也越来越大。在 20 世纪 60 年代，25 英寸的彩色屏幕是客厅的焦点。到 20 世纪 90 年代中期，屏幕尺寸已攀升至 40 英寸。想要与朋友分享体育赛事的人选择甚至更大的背投模型，重达数百磅。从豪宅客厅的另一边可以看到每一个细节——这对于超级碗派对来说还不错，但如果坐得更近，就会模糊不清。

Cameras weren’t the only piece of consumer electronics to be stealthily turned into computers on the inside. The same thing happened to televisions and video players. Since the 1950s, television pictures in the US had been transmitted as images broken into 483 scan lines arranged horizontally across the screen. At the same time, televisions were getting bigger and bigger. In the 1960s, a 25-inch color screen would have been the proud centerpiece of a living room. By the mid-1990s, screen sizes had crept up to 40 inches. People looking to share sports events with their friends were opting for even larger back projection models, weighing hundreds of pounds. Every detail was visible from the far side of a McMansion’s living room—good for a Super Bowl party but jarringly fuzzy if one sat any closer.

录制的视频看起来尤其糟糕，因为 VHS 录像机只能捕捉到一半的分辨率。当数字视频光盘 (DVD) 播放器于 1997 年问世时，最初的售价约为 1,000 美元，它们成为美国历史上采用速度最快的消费设备。到 2003 年，美国一半的家庭都拥有 DVD 播放器，播放器的售价仅为 50 美元。DVD 实际上是 CD 技术的延伸，可以播放数字视频和音频。光盘大小相同，DVD 播放器也可以播放 CD。

Recorded video looked particularly bad, because VHS recorders captured only half that resolution. When digital video disc (DVD) players arrived in 1997, initially priced around a $1,000, they became the fastest-adopted consumer devices in American history. By 2003, half the homes in the United States had a DVD player, and players could be purchased for as little as $50. DVD was, in effect, the extension of CD technology to play digital video as well as audio. The discs were the same size, and DVD players could also handle CDs.

DVD 的视频质量比 VHS 录像带好得多。每张光盘存储的数据量大约相当于六张 CD。这远远不足以存储分辨率高达 720 × 480 像素的未压缩电影，因此播放器采用定制芯片构建，能够从少量数据中重建清晰流畅的移动图像。廉价播放器的效果更差，尤其是屏幕暗区的细微变化。由于播放器是伪装成计算机的，因此光盘包含交互式菜单，甚至简单的游戏。

DVDs gave much better video quality than VHS tapes. Each disc held about as much data as six CDs. That wasn’t nearly enough to store an uncompressed movie at resolutions of up to 720×480 pixels, so players were built around custom chips able to reconstruct a crisp and smoothly moving image from a trickle of data. Cheap players did a worse job, particularly with subtle variations in dark areas of the screen. As the players were disguised computers, discs included interactive menus and even simple games.

光盘的制造成本比磁带低。几年后，该行业降价以鼓励人们像 CD 和录音带一样收藏，而不是从录像店租借电影。2004 年，VHS 播放器在销量暴跌后突然从电子产品零售商的货架上消失，尽管生产直到 2016 年才完全停止^。29

Discs were cheaper to manufacture than tapes. After a few years, the industry dropped its prices to encourage people to build collections as with CDs and audio tapes rather than rent movies from video stores. In 2004, VHS players abruptly vanished from the shelves of electronics retailers after sales collapsed, although production did not cease entirely until 2016.²⁹

DVD 驱动器在高端个人电脑中迅速取代了 CD-ROM 驱动器。对于拥有大显示器的用户来说，这是将播放器连接到普通电视的一种有吸引力的替代方案。它们对视频游戏也很有吸引力——看似巨大的数据 CD 存储空间很快就被视频内容所吞噬，导致游戏过程中经常更换光盘。

DVD drives quickly replaced CD-ROM drives in higher end personal computers. For users with large monitors this was an attractive alternative to hooking up a player to an ordinary TV. They were also attractive for video games—the seemingly vast storage of data CDs had quickly been swallowed up by video content, resulting in frequent disc swaps during play.

数字电视

Digital Television

DVD 的普及使传统电视的低画质问题变得十分明显。早在 20 世纪 80 年代，国际上就已同意向高清电视过渡，但要实现这一目标，从拍摄到播出，整个制作链都必须重新制作。广播帧多达 1,080 行，每行 1,920 像素，需要进行严格的视频压缩。北美和欧洲都采用了 MPEG-2 压缩，与 MP3 和 JPEG 格式密切相关。1998 年 8 月，《纽约时报》报道称，第一台真正的高清电视至少要花费 8,000 美元，其中 2,000 美元用于购买解压视频所需的计算机芯片。30^实际上，大多数早期的高清电视只能处理较低的分辨率。

The adoption of DVDs made the poor image quality of conventional televisions painfully apparent. An international transition to high definition had been agreed upon in the 1980s, but to make it a reality the entire production chain, from filming to broadcasting, had to be remade. Broadcasting frames of up to 1,080 lines, each 1,920 pixels, required aggressive video compression. North America and Europe both adopted MPEG-2 compression, closely related to the MP3 and JPEG formats. In August 1998, the New York Times reported that the first true high-definition televisions would cost at least $8,000, with $2,000 of that for the computer chips needed to decompress video.³⁰ In practice, most early HD sets could handle only a lower resolution.

在美国，正式的转换发生在 2009 年 6 月 12 日，常规模拟信号广播结束。这是 1996 年《电信法案》规定的，但由于高清电视的采用速度比预期的要慢，国会多次推迟了最后期限。为了帮助那些希望在旧电视上观看广播节目的大多数较贫穷的消费者，该法案为数字转换盒提供了补贴。它们的成本只是政府通过拍卖以前由电视台占用的无线电频率获得的 200 亿美元的一小部分。它们被 Verizon Wireless 和 AT&T Mobility 等公司抢购一空，用于高速数据服务。

In the US, the official changeover took place on June 12, 2009, with the end of broadcasting of regular analog signals. This was mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, although Congress pushed the deadline back several times after high-definition television was adopted more slowly than anticipated. To help the mostly poorer consumers who wished to watch broadcasts on older televisions, the act subsidized digital converter boxes. Their cost was a fraction of the $20 billion the government received by auctioning off the radio frequencies formerly occupied by television stations. They were snapped up by companies like Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility to be used for high-speed data services.

高清图像的宽高比更大，模仿电影屏幕。当高清电视开始成为现实时，电视显示技术也在发生变化。传统电视（包括第一代高清电视）将电子发射到管子中，使末端的屏幕发光。屏幕越大意味着管子越长，因此机箱也越大越重。索尼最大的型号屏幕为 40 英寸，重量超过 300 磅。

High definition images had a wider aspect ratio, modelled on movie screens. By the time HDTV started to become a reality, television display technology was also changing. Traditional televisions, including the first high definition models, blasted electrons down a tube to make the screen at the end glow. A bigger screen meant a longer tube, and hence a bigger and heavier cabinet. Sony’s biggest model had a forty-inch screen and weighed more than 300 pounds.

20 世纪 70 年代，埃文斯曾预测“90 年代的平板超高清屏幕”将是“墙面大小的显示屏，能够提供生动逼真的图像”。31^两项新技术均借鉴了计算机显示器，使轻薄的大屏幕电视得以诞生。其中一项技术是等离子电视，于 1997 年首次在美国推出。该技术适用于更大的电视屏幕，并能提供出色的色彩再现。到 2010 年代，另一项技术——液晶显示器 (LCD) 开始占据主导地位。这些电视本质上是 20 世纪 90 年代以来笔记本电脑和 21 世纪初台式电脑显示器所用屏幕的巨型版本。

In the 1970s, Evans had predicted that “the flat, super high definition screens of the 90’s” would be “wall sized displays offering vivid and compelling realistic images.”³¹ Two newer technologies, both borrowed from computer displays, enabled the creation of thin, lightweight large-screen televisions. One technology, plasma, were first available in the US in 1997. The technology worked well for larger television screens and gave excellent color reproduction. By the 2010s, the other, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), began to dominate. These televisions were, essentially, giant versions of the screens used since the 1990s for laptop computers and since the early 2000s as desktop computer monitors.

计算机和电视技术已经完全融合。电视拥有与计算机显示器相同的数字输入范围、显示分辨率，并且采用相同的技术制造。事实上，电视本身就是计算机。随着强大的计算机芯片成本下降，即使是价格实惠的电视也开始整合智能电视功能。它们有 USB 端口来播放硬盘驱动器中的视频和音乐，还有以太网端口和 Wi-Fi 连接来访问计算机网络，并且允许用户下载和运行应用程序。

The convergence of computer and television technology was complete. Televisions had the same range of digital inputs as computer monitors, displayed similar resolutions, and were built from the same technologies. In fact, televisions were themselves computers. As the cost of powerful computer chips fell, even affordable televisions began to incorporate smart TV features. They had USB ports to play videos and music from hard disk drives, Ethernet ports, and Wi-Fi connections to access computer networks and they let users download and run applications.

甚至拥有 DVD 播放器的人也可能改用录像带录制电视广播。这项任务落到了另一种隐形计算机——数字视频录像机 (DVR) 身上。迈克尔·刘易斯 (Michael Lewis) 在 2000 年撰文预测，这将意味着传统大众电视广告的终结，因为用户可以跳过广告，将观看与广播时间表脱钩。每个用户“实际上都会创建自己的私人电视频道，存储在黑匣子的硬盘上，并根据自己的兴趣进行高度精确的定制。” ³²最成功的是 1999 年推出的 TiVo，这是一台基于 PowerPC 的计算机，硬盘至少有 14 GB，用于存储视频，调制解调器用于检索节目表，电视调谐器和 MPEG-2 数字转换器芯片用于从有线电视输入中提取视频。TiVo 可以录制单个节目或整季节目。根据这些选择，它们会猜测主人可能会喜欢哪些节目，并将它们也录制下来。这引发了一系列喜剧表演，其中的妙语是“我的 TiVo 认为我是同性恋”。这种技术爱好者和脆弱的阳刚之气的结合捕捉到了文化时刻。TiVo 的辉煌时刻很短暂，因为通过互联网传输视频的服务开始取代传统的广播电视模式。

Even someone with a DVD player might revert to videotape to record television broadcasts. That task fell to another kind of stealth computer, the digital video recorder (DVR). Writing in 2000, Michael Lewis predicted that this would spell the end of traditional mass-market television advertising, as users skipped advertisements and decoupled their viewing from broadcast schedules. Each user “would create, in essence, his own private television channel, stored on a hard drive in the black box, tailored with great precision to his interests.”³² The most successful was the TiVo, introduced in 1999, a PowerPC-based computer with a hard drive of at least 14 GB to store video, a modem to retrieve program schedules, and a television tuner and MPEG-2 digitizer chip to extract video from a cable TV input. TiVos could be asked to record individual programs or entire seasons of a show. On the basis of those selections, they would guess what shows their masters might enjoy and record those, too. This led to a spate of comedy routines with the punch line “My TiVo thinks I’m gay.” This combination of technophilia and fragile masculinity captured a cultural moment. TiVo’s moment in the sun was brief, as services that streamed video over the Internet began to displace traditional models of broadcast television.

模拟机顶盒让位于基于计算机的数字替代品，有时内置类似 Tivo 的功能。模拟有线电视提供了大约 60 个模糊频道，但它们的替代机顶盒使用数字压缩来提供数百个更高清晰度的频道，以及视频点播服务。21 世纪初的媒体爱好者可能会在客厅的一角藏有六台功能强大的计算机：一台高清电视、一台 DVD 播放器、一台 Tivo、一个数字机顶盒和几台游戏机。

Analog set-top cable boxes gave way to computer-based digital replacements, sometimes with built-in Tivo-like capabilities. Analog cable TV had delivered around sixty fuzzy channels, but their replacement boxes used digital compression to provide several hundred channels in higher definition, plus video on-demand services. A media enthusiast of the early 2000s might have half a dozen powerful computers hiding in one corner of her living room: a HDTV, a DVD player, a Tivo, a digital set-top box, and a couple of games consoles.

自数字视频技术首次采用以来，分辨率一直在不断提高。蓝光光盘本质上是容量更大的 DVD，容量为 50 GB，能够播放全高清电影，而不会因压缩而损失任何图像质量。4K 电视和 UHD 蓝光光盘使用的像素是普通高清电视的四倍。只有坐在超大电视机旁的人才能看到 4K 的额外细节，尽管新格式伴随着色彩编码的改进，使电视能够显示更生动逼真的图像。

Since the initial adoption of digital video technology, resolutions have continued to improve. Blu-ray discs were essentially higher capacity DVDs, with 50 gigabyte capacities able to play movies in full high definition without losing any image quality to compression. 4K televisions and UHD Blu-ray disks used four times the pixels of regular high-definition sets. The extra detail of 4K was visible only to people sitting close to very large televisions, although the new formats were accompanied by improvements to the encoding of color that let televisions display more vivid and realistic images.

MP3 格式

The MP3 Format

让用户开始建立音乐库变得切实可行的是有效压缩技术的传播。MP3 文件格式可以将音乐 CD 压缩到大约 20 MB。这牺牲了音频质量，但听起来仍然比磁带复制品好。MP3 文件扩展名是 MPEG Audio Layer III 的缩写。MPEG 本身代表运动图像专家组，这是一个由德国伊尔梅瑙弗劳霍夫数字媒体技术研究所支持的组织。在20 世纪 90 年代初，ISDN 数字电话线有望取代传统电话线和调制解调器。它们每秒可传输 128 千比特 (16 KB) 的数据，这足以以数字方式传输视频，前提是能够开发出非常高效的压缩技术。播放 CD 中的高质量电影是激励 Frauhofer 研究人员的另一个目标^。33

What made it practical for users to start building up music libraries was the spread of effective compression technology. The MP3 file format could compress a music CD to perhaps 20 MB. That sacrificed audio quality, but it still sounded better than a tape copy. The MP3 filename extension was a contraction of MPEG Audio Layer III. MPEG itself stood for Motion Pictures Experts Group, an organization supported by the Frauhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology in Ilmenau, Germany. In the early 1990s, ISDN digital telephone lines were expected to replace traditional phone lines and modems. They could carry 128 kilobits (16 KB) a second, which was enough to transmit video digitally if, and only if, very efficient compression techniques could be developed. Playing back high-quality movies from CDs was another goal motivating the Frauhofer researchers.³³

MPEG 在 20 世纪 90 年代初发明的视频压缩技术最终得到了广泛应用，但在最初，世界只关注其提出的最复杂（第 3 层）算法所提供的音频压缩。硬盘可以存储数百首 MP3 歌曲，还有足够的空间用于程序和其他数据。处理器能力的快速提升意味着个人计算机可以轻松处理播放文件所需的计算量大的解压缩工作。Windows 95 可以流畅地在后台播放音乐。一款名为 WinAmp 的共享软件播放器于 1997 年首次发布，它使从大量歌曲中挑选歌曲并播放变得非常容易。WinAmp 高度模块化，允许用户下载可视化和插件来播放其他音频格式。

The video compression techniques devised by MPEG during the early 1990s were eventually widely used, but at the beginning, the world seized on the audio compression provided by the most complex (layer 3) of its proposed algorithms. Hard drives could hold hundreds of MP3 songs with room left for programs and other data. Rapid increases in processor power meant that personal computers had no trouble handling the computationally demanding decompression work needed to play the files. Windows 95 could play music smoothly as a background task. An attractive shareware player called WinAmp, first released in 1997, made it easy to pick songs from a large collection and play them. WinAmp was highly modular, letting users download visualizations and plug-ins to play other audio formats.

音乐行业拒绝了这项新技术，因此 MP3 首先在大学生和盗版音乐的商业分销商中流行起来。34^学生是流行音乐的重度消费者，但通常没有多少钱购买唱片或存储空间。但他们把电脑塞进了宿舍，宿舍里有高速以太网连接，可以访问校园资源和更广泛的互联网。

The music industry had rejected the new technology, so MP3s caught on first with college students and commercial distributors of pirated music.³⁴ Students were heavy consumers of pop music, but typically had little money to buy recordings or space to store them. But they had squeezed PCs into their dorm rooms, which were wired with high-speed Ethernet connections to campus resources and to the broader Internet.

学生们通过临时的本地网络与朋友共享文件。1999 年，19 岁的创业青年 Sean Parker 和东北大学本科生 Shawn Fanning 创建了一个名为 Napster 的程序，用于自动共享音乐文件。一年之内，已有数千万人在使用。该程序扫描音乐文件夹，将其内容添加到 Napster 托管的目录中。当搜索目录的人点击下载歌曲时，他们的计算机会直接从用户的计算机上下载该歌曲（见图11.6）。Parker 希望这种点对点机制可以保护 Napster 免受版权侵权索赔^。35

Students were sharing files with their friends over ad hoc local networks. In 1999 Sean Parker, an entrepreneurial nineteen-year-old, and Shawn Fanning, an undergraduate at Northeastern University, created a program called Napster to automate the process of sharing music files. Within a year, tens of millions of people were using it. The program scanned music folders, adding their contents to a catalog hosted by Napster. When someone searching the catalog clicked to download a song, their computer downloaded it directly from the computer of a user (see figure 11.6). Parker hoped that this peer-to-peer mechanism would shield Napster from copyright infringement claims.³⁵

尽管如此，音乐行业的诉讼还是将 Napster 消灭了，取而代之的是其他真正去中心化的系统。从 2005 年开始，美国唱片业协会对其用户提起了一系列广为人知的诉讼。在一个案例中，一名妇女因提供 24 首歌曲供下载而被罚款 192 万美元。36^这未能阻止文件共享系统的发展。它们不仅比合法购买音乐更便宜，而且更快捷、更方便。

After lawsuits from the music industry nevertheless wiped out Napster, its place was taken by other, truly decentralized, systems. Starting in 2005 the Recording Industry Association of America brought a series of widely publicized lawsuits against their users. In one case, a woman was fined $1.92 million for making twenty-four songs available for download.³⁶ This failed to halt the growth of filesharing systems. They were not just cheaper than purchasing music legally, but also faster and more convenient.

音乐播放器

Music Players

虽然用 MP3 文件建立的音乐收藏比一架子的光盘更方便，但需要高端 PC 来存储和重放它。这对于听音乐来说很有用在宿舍里工作时，或者对于携带笔记本电脑旅行的人来说，在酒店房间里听音乐并不是那么好。在街上行走或开车时听音乐就不那么好了。这些都是重要的市场。早在 20 世纪 50 年代，小型电池供电的便携式收音机就是晶体管的第一个大型消费应用。在 20 世纪 80 年代，索尼的 Walkman 磁带播放器在世界各地的青少年腰带上占有一席之地。

Although a music collection built from MP3 files was more convenient than a shelf full of discs, it took a high-end PC to store and replay it. That worked for listening to music while working in a dorm room, or, for people who traveled with laptops, in a hotel room. It was not so great for listening to music when walking down the street or driving in a car. Those were important markets. Back in the 1950s, small battery-powered portable radios had been the first big consumer application for transistors. In the 1980s, Sony’s Walkman tape player found a place on the belts of teenagers around the world.

到 2000 年，廉价、节能的处理器已经足够强大，可以处理 MP3 解码。第一批袖珍型播放器，如 Diamond Rio 和 Creative Labs Nomad 系列，存储量约为 64 MB，大概相当于三张高度压缩的音乐专辑。用户必须根据自己的心情选择和下载歌曲，然后摆弄笨拙的控件才能播放。索尼为了体现其高端消费电子公司的地位，推出了更精致、价格高出一倍的记忆棒随身听。作为 CBS Records 的所有者，索尼希望保护音乐销售。唱片公司最初不愿意使用 MP3 格式，因为这些文件很容易共享。因此，索尼选择了专有的文件格式和存储卡设计，以便可以控制用户共享在线购买的音乐的能力。

By 2000 cheap, energy-efficient processors were powerful enough to tackle MP3 decoding. The first pocket-sized players, such as the Diamond Rio and Creative Labs Nomad series, stored around 64 MB—maybe three albums of highly compressed music. Their users had to choose and download songs to fit their mood and then fiddle with clumsy controls to play them. Sony, reflecting its position as the premium consumer electronics firm, countered with a slicker Memory Stick Walkman that cost twice as much. As owner of CBS Records, Sony wanted to protect music sales. Music labels were initially reluctant to use the MP3 format because the files were so easy to share. Sony therefore chose a proprietary file format and memory card design so that the ability of users to share music purchased online could be controlled.

这些播放器很快就被苹果的 iPod（图 11.7 ）这个新产品打败了。2001 年，史蒂夫·乔布斯推出了第一个版本，其宣传口号是“口袋里有 1000 首歌曲。”它们之所以能如此合适，是因为 Apple 采用了能够存储 5 GB 的新型微型 1.8 英寸硬盘。用户界面被精简到只剩下基本功能，以旋转轮为中心。四个按钮让用户开始/停止播放、向前或向后跳转歌曲以及返回上一屏幕。与 1984 年的原始 Macintosh 一样，界面开辟了新局面。与原始 Macintosh 不同，iPod 非常适合其预期任务。

These players were quickly quashed by a new entry, Apple’s iPod (figure 11.7). The first version, launched by Steve Jobs in 2001, was promoted with the slogan of “a thousand songs in your pocket.” They fit because Apple had built it around a new, miniaturized, 1.8-inch hard drive able to store 5 GB. The user interface was stripped down to its essentials, centered on a spinning wheel. Four buttons let users start/stop playback, jump forward or backward with songs, and return to the previous screen. As with the original Macintosh, back in 1984, the interface broke new ground. Unlike the original Macintosh, the iPod was ideally suited to its intended task.

其他公司已经围绕硬盘开发了播放器。苹果拥有一流的工业设计和优雅简约的美学。《华尔街日报》的 Walter Mossberg 在评论这款设备时称它是一款“出色的数字音乐播放器，解决了所有问题”，而竞争对手的硬盘播放器，如 Creative 去年推出的 Nomad Jukebox，看起来就像一个臃肿、价格低廉的 CD 播放器。37^史蒂文·利维 (Steven Levy) 用整整一本书《完美之物》来描述 iPod，称其为“21 世纪最熟悉、当然也是最令人向往的新事物” ^。38 它拿在手里感觉恰到好处，小巧却沉甸甸的，而且它像一个活物一样振动，当硬盘旋转起来时，发出轻柔的呜呜声和几乎难以察觉的颤抖。

Other companies had already built players around hard drives. What Apple did have was first rate industrial design and an aesthetic of elegant simplicity. Reviewing the device, Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal called it a “terrific digital music player that solves all [the] problems” with rival hard drive based players like Creative’s Nomad Jukebox, launched the previous year, which looked like a bloated, budget priced CD player.³⁷ Steven Levy devoted an entire book, The Perfect Thing, to the iPod, calling it “the most familiar, and certainly the most desirable, new object of the twenty-first century.”³⁸ It felt just right in the hand, small but reassuringly heavy, and it vibrated like a living thing, issuing a gentle whine and a barely perceptible shudder as its hard drive spun up.

完美总是可以不断改进的。苹果每年都会发布新版 iPod。它增加了对 Windows PC 和 USB 连接的支持。按钮可以移动，然后消失在滚轮中。滚轮从可旋转的磁盘变成了可触控的表面。屏幕变得更大更清晰，从黑白变成彩色，先显示照片集，然后显示电影。电池寿命得到了改善。驱动器容量不断增加，在 2007 年 9 月的最后一代产品中达到了 160 GB 的峰值。发布该型号时，史蒂夫·乔布斯可以夸耀苹果已经销售了 1.1 亿台 iPod。39^这是该公司最受欢迎的电脑，销量是所有 Macintosh 机型总销量的 10 倍以上。它们标志性的白色耳塞在富裕社区随处可见，带有 iPod 接口的时钟收音机成为连锁酒店的标准配置。

Perfection can always be improved upon. Every year Apple released a new version of the iPod. It added support for Windows PCs and USB connections. The buttons moved around and then vanished into the wheel itself. The wheel changed from a spinnable disk to a strokeable surface. The screen grew large and crisper, changed from black and white to color, and showed first photograph collections and then movies. Battery life improved. Drive capacities grew, peaking at 160 GB for the final generation in September 2007. Launching that model, Steve Jobs was able to boast that Apple had sold 110 million iPods.³⁹ It was the firm’s most popular computer, outselling the combined sales of all Macintosh models more than ten times over. Their telltale white earbuds were inescapable in affluent neighborhoods, and clock radios with docking connectors for iPods became a standard fixture of chain hotels.

iPod 改变了人们购买和消费音乐的方式，结束了百年来去商店购买唱片或圆筒录音的做法。MP3 播放器的第一个吸引力在于那些硬盘里已经存满音乐文件的人们。虽然新软件可以更轻松地将 CD 中的音频“翻录”成 MP3 文件，但非法下载音乐文件仍是获取新音乐最快捷、最方便的方式。2003 年，苹果推出 iTunes 在线音乐商店，情况发生了改变。它不是第一个在线音乐市场，但却是第一个将实惠与便利性和大量选择结合在一起的市场。每首歌曲仅售 99 美分。到 2010 年，iTunes 成为全球最大的音乐零售商，推动了人们从专辑向独立热门歌曲的转变。iTunes 还分发独立广播节目，从而引发了至今仍被称为播客的持久繁荣。

The iPod had changed the way people purchased and consumed music, ending the century-old practice of visiting a store and purchasing a disc or cylinder holding a recording. The first appeal of MP3 players was for those whose hard drives were already full of music files. Newer software made it easier to “rip” audio from CDs into MP3 files, but illegally downloading a music file remained the fastest and most convenient way to get new music. That changed when Apple launched its iTunes online music store in 2003. It wasn’t the first online music marketplace, but it was the first to combine affordability with convenience and a large selection. Songs were priced at just 99 cents each. By 2010, iTunes was the largest music retailer in the world, driving a shift away from albums and back toward free-standing hit songs. iTunes also distributed independent radio shows, leading to an enduring boom in what are still called podcasts.

苹果推出了一系列其他 iPod 型号，但没有一款能像普通 iPod 那样具有标志性的稳定性，普通 iPod 的基本形状是固定的，每年更新时厚度或重量只会增加一点点。2005 年首次推出的 Nano 型号是围绕闪存而非硬盘构建的。早期型号只能容纳 1 GB 的音乐。它们的形状每年都在发生巨大变化。有些复古款像名片一样宽，有些又高又薄。其中一款是方形的，可以当手表戴在身上。相机、麦克风和收音机的出现和消失速度令人眼花缭乱。

Apple introduced a range of other iPod models, none with the iconic stability of the regular iPod, which had a fixed basic form growing just a little thicker or lighter in each annual rebirth. Its Nano models, first offered in 2005, were built around flash memory rather than hard drives. Early models held as little as 1 GB of music. Their shapes mutated dramatically from year to year. Some vintages were wide like business cards, other tall and thin. One was square and could be worn as a watch. Cameras, microphones, and radios came and went with dizzying rapidity.

iPod 的功能与台式电脑或笔记本电脑的功能一样，但它可以优雅地放在口袋中，在散步、慢跑或飞行时连续数小时使用。用户更喜欢一个专门的盒子，隐藏通用的计算技术，而不是灵活的个人电脑的物理限制。专辑已经消失，但音乐收藏即使以数字形式保留了令人安心的物理重量。旧 iPod 是过去自我的快照。这种情感纽带推动了 2017 年电影《极盗车神》的情节，片中的偷车贼几乎一直在听被盗播放器的收藏。苹果与 iPod 的联系如此紧密，以至于 2009 年《洋葱报》刊登了一篇讽刺报道，报道了一款使用控制轮而不是键盘的“MacBook Wheel”笔记本电脑。一位假冒的苹果发言人吹嘘说：“一切只需点击几百下即可。”一位顾客说：“只要是闪亮的、苹果制造的，我几乎什么都会买。” ⁴⁰

The iPod did nothing that a desktop or laptop computer could not already do, but it could do it gracefully, from a pocket, for hours at a time during walking or jogging or flying. Users preferred a specialized box, hiding the universal technology of computing, over the physical constraints of a flexible personal computer. Albums had vanished, but music collections retained a reassuring physical heft even in digital form. An old iPod is a snapshot of one’s past self. That emotional bond drove the plot of the 2017 movie Baby Driver, whose titular car thief listened almost continually to a collection of purloined players. Apple was so strongly associated with the iPod that in 2009 The Onion ran a satirical report about a “MacBook Wheel” laptop which used a control wheel instead of a keyboard. “Everything,” a fake Apple spokesman boasted, “is just a few hundred clicks away.” A customer noted, “I’ll buy almost anything if it’s shiny and made by Apple.”⁴⁰

ARM 处理器架构

The ARM Processor Architecture

iPod 的核心是双核 PP 5002 芯片，它拥有相当于 20 世纪 90 年代中期台式 PC 的处理能力，但 iPod 仅靠一块小电池就能运行数小时。Portal Player 是一家小公司，专门为 Apple 开发了这款芯片。与大多数开发类似产品的公司一样，该公司的设计并非从零开始。相反，它获得了一家名为 ARM 的英国公司的处理器设计许可。用于简单控制应用的传统微控制器作为标准芯片出售，通常基于旧的 8 位处理器。ARM 方法使用现代 RISC 架构提供了更强大的计算能力。ARM 客户通过合并处理器和其他所需功能来生产所谓的片上系统 (SoC)，从而降低了控制板的成本和尺寸。Portal Player 没有自己的工厂。它使用计算机设计工具来集成 SoC 的组件，并将生成的数据文件发送到芯片工厂进行生产。

The double core PP 5002 chip at the heart of the iPod gave it the processing capability of a mid-1990s desktop PC, but the iPod could run for hours on a tiny battery. Portal Player, a small firm, had created the chip specially for Apple. Like most other companies creating similar products, it did not start its design from scratch. Instead it licensed a processor design from a British firm called ARM. Traditional microcontrollers for simple control applications were sold as standard chips, often based on old, 8-bit processors. The ARM approach provided more computing power using a modern RISC architecture. ARM customers reduced the cost and size of their control boards by merging the processor and other needed capabilities to produce what was called a System on a Chip (SoC). Portal Player did not own a factory. It used computer design tools to integrate the components of the SoC, sending the resulting data file to a chip factory for production.

ARM 于 1983 年在 Acorn Computers（BBC Micro 的生产商）成立。该公司与计算机科学研究有着密切的联系。受 RISC 学术工作的影响，该公司的两名工程师 Steve Furber 和 Sophie Wilson 受到启发，创建了自己的快速简便的处理器。Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) 处理器首次出现在 Acorn 1987 年的阿基米德计算机中。它被誉为“我用过的最快的计算机，速度快得多……几乎你所做的一切都是瞬间发生的”，但 Acorn 缺乏资源与日益占主导地位的 IBM PC 和 Macintosh 平台竞争。41^意识到这种效率惊人的处理器的潜在市场比它所驱动的计算机更大，Acorn 于 1990 年剥离了 ARM Holdings，以销售用于其他设备的 ARM 技术。ARM 设计开始出现在各种产品中，从激光打印机和磁盘驱动器到移动电话和网络路由器。到 21 世纪初，ARM 已占据嵌入式 32 位处理器市场的主导地位，成为英国最大的计算机硬件成功案例。ARM 设计甚至被用于生产超级计算机。

ARM began in 1983 at Acorn Computers, producer of the BBC Micro. The firm had strong connections to computer science research. Influenced by academic work on RISC two of its engineers, Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson, were inspired to create their own fast and simple processor. The Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processor appeared first in Acorn’s 1987 Archimedes computer. It was hailed as “the fastest computer I have ever used, by a considerable margin … just about everything you do happens instantly,” but Acorn lacked the resources to compete against the increasingly dominant IBM PC and Macintosh platforms.⁴¹ Recognizing that the strikingly efficient processor had a larger potential market than the computers it powered, in 1990 Acorn spun off ARM Holdings to sell ARM technology for other devices. ARM designs began to show up in all kinds of products, from laser printers and disk drives to mobile phones and network routers. By the early 2000s, ARM dominated the market for embedded 32-bit processors, becoming Britain’s biggest computer hardware success story. ARM designs have even been used to produce supercomputers.

移动设备的开发（许多都是基于授权的 ARM 处理器核心）由于另一项技术的成熟而变得更加容易：通用现场可编程门阵列 (FPGA) 芯片，可以通过电子方式针对特定应用进行编程。与生产定制硅片相比，这种工艺成本低得多，非常适合原型设备或小批量生产的设备，而传统的 ASIC 芯片则不适用于这些设备。

The creation of mobile devices, many built around licensed ARM processor cores, was made easier by the maturation of another technology: general-purpose field programmable gate array (FPGA) chips that could be programmed electronically for particular applications. This was a much cheaper process than producing custom silicon and was ideal for prototype devices or equipment with small production runs, for which conventional ASIC chips would not be viable.

虚拟现实

Virtual Reality

20 世纪 80 年代末，逼真的交互式图形的前景与人们对虚拟现实的热情密不可分。用户戴上耳机，每只眼睛都能看到不同的视图，从而创造出真正的 3D 体验。转动头部可以改变视图，特殊的手套可以控制虚拟手来拾取和操作物体（图 11.8）。该技术由 NASA 为太空模拟而开发。从长远来看，爱好者们期待全身感官沉浸。44^他们希望实现威廉·吉布森等作家在赛博朋克世界中做出的令人兴奋但技术模糊的赛博空间互动承诺^。45

In the late 1980s, the prospect of realistic interactive graphics was bound up with enthusiasm for virtual reality. Users put on headsets showing a different view for each eye, creating a true 3D experience. Turning their heads would change the view, and special gloves would control virtual hands to pick up and work with objects (figure 11.8). The technology had been developed by NASA for space simulation. In the longer term, enthusiasts looked forward to full body sensory immersion.⁴⁴ They were hoping to realize the exciting but technologically vague promises of interaction in cyberspace made in the cyberpunk worlds of authors like William Gibson.⁴⁵

Unix 工作站的先进图形处理能力为虚拟现实的发展提供了支撑，而 PC 无法与之匹敌。硅谷图形公司是 20 世纪 90 年代初发展最快的工作站公司，引领了这一潮流。硅谷图形公司的计算机为早期的虚拟现实头盔提供动力，并在 1993 年的电影《侏罗纪公园》中占据重要地位，这体现了该公司在将前所未有的逼真恐龙带入现实方面所做出的贡献。其产品是电影制作的标准设备，也是需要制作交互式 3D 可视化的工程和建筑应用的标准设备。

Work on virtual reality was underpinned by the advanced graphical capability of Unix workstations, which PCs could not rival. Silicon Graphics, the fastest growing workstation company of the early 1990s, led the charge. Silicon Graphics computers powered early VR headsets and were featured prominently in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, a nod to the firm’s part in bringing its unprecedentedly realistic dinosaurs to life. Its products were standard equipment for movie production and also for engineering and architecture applications needing to produce interactive 3D visualizations.

基于 RISC 的 Silicon Graphics Indigo 工作站于 1991 年推出，支持几何引擎图形处理器，可加速 3D 图形的渲染。该公司还创建了标准 OpenGL 编程接口来描述 3D 世界。这提供了抽象性和可移植性：应用程序生成环境的 OpenGL 描述，而如何逼真地渲染它们的问题则留给操作系统和图形系统的相互作用。1996 年，在其成功的巅峰时期，Silicon Graphics 收购了 Cray Research。这反映了非常逼真的图形所需的计算能力，以及它成为其他高性能计算领域领导者的决心。

The Silicon Graphics RISC-based Indigo workstations, introduced in 1991, supported geometry engine graphics processors to speed the rendering of 3D graphics. The firm also created the standard OpenGL programming interface to describe 3D worlds. This provided abstraction and portability: applications produced OpenGL descriptions of environments, leaving questions about how to realistically render them to the interplay of the operating system and the graphics system. In 1996, at the peak of its success, Silicon Graphics purchased Cray Research. That reflected the amount of computing power needed for very realistic graphics and its determination to become a leader in other areas of high-performance computing.

这种态度被证明是狂妄自大，因为购买并没有产生预期的利润。这项技术也没有达到虚拟现实的炒作水平。任天堂和世嘉等公司确实推出了一些消费产品，但没有一款成功。显示器抖动让人感到不舒服，因为感知的变化并没有跟上头部的运动。更根本的是，沉浸式界面被证明并不适合实际任务。快速浏览数据库、在账户分类账中走动或通过伸手和重新排列其组件来操纵财务模型的想法可能看起来令人兴奋。在实践中，点击和打字迄今为止被证明更有效^。46

This attitude turned out to be hubris, as the purchase did not yield the desired profits. Nor did the technology deliver on the virtual reality hype. Some consumer products did come to market from firms like Nintendo and Sega, but none were successful. Jerky displays make people feel sick because changes in perception did not keep up with movement of the head. More fundamentally, immersive interfaces turned out to be badly suited for practical tasks. The idea of flying through a database, walking around an account ledger, or manipulating a financial model by reaching out and rearranging its components may seem exciting. In practice, clicking and typing has so far proved more effective.⁴⁶

3D 游戏

3D Games

硅谷图形公司机器的 3D 技术确实改变了视频游戏，但没有特殊的耳机或数据手套。在视频游戏中，“3D”通常意味着玩家似乎正在与一个以逼真的视角绘制的世界进行交互，而不是卡通般的平面视图或固定的俯视视角。这些技术最初广泛应用于模拟游戏，如 20 世纪 80 年代中期的热门游戏《名校风暴》。它们只绘制物体的线框轮廓，但要使它们流畅地动起来，所需的计算需要编程技巧。20 世纪 80 年代后期的 16 位处理器可以处理更复杂的形状，并通过着色来模拟固体物体。即便如此，它们通常只为屏幕的一小部分制作动画，其余部分则用飞行控制、地图或方向盘填充。

3D techniques drawn from Silicon Graphics machines did transform video gaming, but without special headsets or data gloves. In video gaming, “3D” usually meant that instead of a cartoon-like flat view or a fixed overhead perspective, the player appeared to be interacting with a world drawn with realistic perspectives. The techniques were first used extensively in simulation games, like the mid-1980s hit Elite. These drew only wireframe outlines of objects, but the calculations required to animate them smoothly required programming feats. The 16-bit processors of the late 1980s could handle more complex shapes, colored in to simulate solid objects. Even so, they typically animated only a small part of the screen, filling the rest with flight controls, maps, or steering wheels.

到 20 世纪 90 年代初，快速的 PC 可以将整个屏幕都填满相对精致的图形。《毁灭战士》最初于 1993 年作为免费软件发布，它比其他任何游戏都更能确立 PC 成为动作游戏的首选平台的地位。一名太空陆战队员冲过一系列迷宫般的关卡，打开门锁，收集更强大的武器，摧毁越来越致命的劫掠恶魔群。它的图形令人惊叹。尽管它的形状仍然非常简单，但《毁灭战士》将所有东西都包裹在纹理中，比如墙壁的砖块图案或恶魔的红色鳞片，以给人一种细节的错觉。它模拟的光明和黑暗区域增添了恐惧的气氛。它的粉丝开始组织局域网聚会，暂时将他们的电脑联网以相互对抗^。47

By the early 1990s, fast PCs could fill whole screens with relatively elaborate graphics. Doom, originally released as freeware in 1993, did more than any other game to establish the PC as a favored platform for action games. A space marine blasts through a series of maze-like levels, unlocking doors, collecting ever more powerful weapons, and destroying increasingly deadly clusters of marauding demons. Its graphics were astonishing. Although its shapes remained quite simple, Doom wrapped everything in textures, like brick patterns for a wall or red scales for a demon, to give the illusion of detail. Its simulated areas of light and darkness added to the mood of dread. Its fans began to organize LAN parties, temporarily networking their computers to fight against each other.⁴⁷

Doom引入了游戏引擎的概念，将管理游戏世界中的事件并将它们呈现给玩家所需的代码与存储在数据文件中的“资产”（例如对象、怪物和隧道）分开。48 ^Infocom和 Sierra On-Line 也采用了类似的冒险游戏方法，但高性能动作游戏之前已经将这些功能紧密集成在一起。Doom需要精心设计且可高度重用的图形代码，使引擎对软件工程的方法（已在专家系统、数据库和图形渲染等领域建立）非常有效。用户利用这一点来创建包含他们自己的地图和变体的数据文件，让玩家在通关原版游戏后很长一段时间内仍对它着迷。Doom的创造者 id Software 能够将引擎授权给其他公司用于他们自己的游戏。当今的游戏引擎是所有软件技术中最复杂、开发成本最高的。

Doom introduced the concept of the game engine, by separating the code needed to manage events in the game world and present them to players from the “assets” such as objects, monsters, and tunnels stored in data files.⁴⁸ Infocom and Sierra On-Line had taken a similar approach to adventure games, but the high-performance action games had previously integrated the functions closely. Doom required elaborate and highly reusable graphics code, making the engine approach to software engineering (already established in areas such as expert systems, databases, and graphics rendering) highly effective. Users exploited this to create data files holding their own maps and variants that kept players hooked long after they beat the original game. Doom’s creator, id Software, was able to license the engine to other companies for their own games. Today’s game engines are among the most complex and expensive to develop of all software technologies.

3D 图形加速器

3D Graphics Accelerators

快速增长的 PC 游戏市场促使硬件设计师复制异国工作站使用的 3D 渲染技术。这项技术由 3dfx 率先采用，该公司是一家由 Silicon Graphics 资深人士创立的初创公司。其 Voodoo Graphics 芯片组可以处理最繁重的任务，例如将纹理映射到几何形状上，而无需占用主处理器。1996 年推出的 Voodoo 扩展卡与传统 VGA 卡一起运行，以提高 3D 性能。

The rapidly growing market for PC gaming encouraged hardware designers to duplicate the 3D rendering technology used by exotic workstations. This was pioneered by 3dfx, a start-up company founded by veterans of Silicon Graphics. Its Voodoo Graphics chipset handled the most laborious tasks, such as mapping textures over geometric shapes, without tying up the main processor. The Voodoo expansion cards, launched in 1996, ran alongside conventional VGA cards to boost 3D performance.

《雷神之锤》是《毁灭战士》的续集，它为游戏玩家提供了升级的强大理由。早期的评论指出，它“设定在一个真正的 3D 世界中”，因此可以从任何角度观看建筑物，并攻击敌人。它的怪物“病态、扭曲和反常”，带有“血腥的鬼脸和熵生物形态”，并通过“极其逼真的动画”加以强调。评论者说：“我第一次被挥舞着钩子的敌人攻击时，实际上放下了鼠标，远离了电脑。” ⁴⁹

Quake, the blockbuster sequel to Doom, provided gamers with a powerful case to upgrade. An early review noted that it was “set in a true 3-D world” so that buildings could be viewed, and enemies attacked, from any angle. Its monsters were “sick, twisted and perverse” with the “bloody grimaces and entropic bioforms” intensified by “utterly convincing animation.” According to the reviewer, “The first time I was attacked by a hook-wielding enemy, I actually dropped the mouse and backed away from the computer.”⁴⁹

1997 年 2 月， Quake引擎的 OpenGL 版本发布，让用户可以从 3D 加速器中受益。它成为了图形硬件事实上的基准。如果没有额外的硬件，即使是最强大的奔腾芯片也只能以320 × 200 像素的低分辨率来描绘Quake中的怪物，并使用不切实际的 256 色调色板来绘制它们。Microsoft Windows 可能会在同一台计算机系统上使用七倍以上的像素，但 3D 图形要求更高，因此处理器只能流畅地进行动画处理以保持幻觉。使用 3Dfx 卡，分辨率增加了四倍，可怕的生物以 65,536 种血腥色调显示。这是游戏史上视频质量最惊人的飞跃。一位评论家指出：“没有在 Voodoo 芯片上看到GLQuake的Quake玩家实际上并没有玩过Quake。它看起来好多了，几乎令人难以置信。” ⁵⁰

In February 1997, an OpenGL version of the Quake engine was released, letting users benefit from 3D accelerators. It became the de facto benchmark for graphics hardware. Without extra hardware even the most powerful Pentium chips portrayed Quake’s monsters at a chunky resolution of 320×200 pixels and painted them with an unrealistic palette of 256 colors. Microsoft Windows might use seven times more pixels on the same computer system, but 3D graphics were more demanding, so that was all the processor could animate smoothly enough to maintain the illusion. With a 3Dfx card, the resolution quadrupled and the scary creatures were displayed in 65,536 shades of gore. This was the most jarring jump in video quality in gaming history. A reviewer noted, “A Quake player that hasn’t seen GLQuake on the Voodoo chip hasn’t really played Quake. It is almost unreal how much better it looks.”⁵⁰

一场竞争开始了，人们开始生产更强大的加速器，提供更高的分辨率，让游戏设计师能够创造更复杂的世界、更逼真的纹理和更复杂的形状。几年来，3dfx 芯片一直占据着严肃游戏玩家的市场，而竞争对手则专注于那些不愿意购买两张显卡的玩家。然而，到 20 世纪 90 年代末，视频游戏玩家开始转向另外两家公司的产品：Nvidia（2000 年收购了 3dfx 的剩余部分）和 ATI。

A race began to produce more powerful accelerators, delivering even higher resolutions and letting game designers create more intricate worlds, more realistic textures, and more complex shapes. For a few years 3dfx chips dominated the market for serious gamers, and rivals focused on those unwilling to purchase two graphics cards. By the end of the 1990s, however, video gamers were defecting to the products of two other companies: Nvidia (which purchased the remains of 3dfx in 2000) and ATI.

随着时间的推移，图形芯片减轻了主处理器的负担，使其不再需要执行越来越复杂的任务。例如，Nvidia 于 1999 年发布的 GeForce 芯片减轻了 CPU 计算几何变换和光照条件的负担。新芯片被宣传为图形处理单元 (GPU)。高端型号配备了巨大的冷却系统和嘈杂的风扇，计算机制造商开始提供更坚固的电源以满足他们的需求。即使是英特尔的新 PCI 连接器也不足以满足数据需求。1997 年，主板制造商增加了一种新的连接器，即加速图形端口 (AGP)。

Over time, graphics chips relieved the main processor of ever more complex tasks. For example, Nvidia’s GeForce chips, released in 1999, relieved the CPU of the need to calculate geometrical transformations and lighting conditions. The new chips were promoted as graphics processing units (GPUs). High-end models came with huge cooling systems and noisy fans, and computer makers started including more rugged power supplies to cater to their needs. Even Intel’s new PCI connectors weren’t fast enough to keep up with the appetite for data. In 1997, motherboard makers added a new connector, the accelerated graphics port (AGP).

随着 21 世纪初计算能力的快速发展，普通计算机用户不再需要频繁升级。旧计算机可以处理文字和网页浏览，而且速度不会变慢。而游戏玩家则始终需要更强的计算能力。去年的显卡无法满足今年游戏的需求。社区逐渐开始对游戏 PC 进行改进，为其配备低温冷却系统等性能调整，以防止芯片在远超额定速度的情况下融化。制造商推出了专为改进而设计的高端显卡和主板。就像跑车的特别版一样，它们以更高的价格提供略高的性能。高端 PC 组件的视觉美感也发生了变化，出现了色彩鲜艳的电路板、灯光和透明外壳，以吸引其他游戏玩家的羡慕。

As computing power grew rapidly during the early 2000s, ordinary computer users had less need to upgrade frequently. Older computers could handle word processing and Web browsing without slowing down. Gamers, on the other hand, always needed more computer power. Last year’s graphics card would not do justice to this year’s game. Communities grew up to tinker with gaming PCs, fitting them with performance tweaks like cryogenic cooling systems to keep chips running far beyond their rated speeds from melting. Manufacturers responded with premium cards and motherboards designed for tweaking. Like special editions of sports cars, they offered a little more performance for a lot more money. The visual aesthetics of high-end PC components changed, too, with brightly colored circuit boards, lights, and transparent cases to attract the envy of other gamers.

虽然高端 PC 的整体成本大幅下降，但高端显卡的价格却持续上涨。基于 Nvidia 于 2006 年推出的 GEForce 8800 GTX 的显卡售价约为 600 美元。这使它们成为大多数计算机中最昂贵的部件，但它们也拥有大部分处理能力。这些显卡的耗电量可能比计算机其他部件的总和还要多。为了获得最佳性能，并排运行两块显卡需要一台配备 800 瓦电源的 PC（大约是 IBM 原始型号的 12 倍）^。51

While the overall costs of high-end PCs were falling dramatically, the price of high-end graphics cards continued to rise. Cards based on Nvidia’s GEForce 8800 GTX, launched in 2006, cost around $600. That made them the most expensive part of most of the computers graced by their presence, but they also held most of the processing capability. These graphics cards could burn more power than the rest of the computer combined. Running two side by side, for top performance, required a PC with an 800-watt power supply (about twelve times more than IBM’s original model).⁵¹

更愿意玩老游戏或忍受较低分辨率的休闲游戏玩家能够使用普通显卡、游戏机以及笔记本电脑内置的日益强大的功能。从 Windows 95 开始，微软就通过其 DirectX 接口广泛支持 3D 图形，这意味着视频游戏玩家不再需要退出 DOS 并摆弄命令行设置才能获得高性能游戏。

More casual gamers, willing to play older titles or tolerate lower resolutions, were able to use the increasingly powerful capabilities built into ordinary graphics cards, games consoles, and eventually laptop computers. From Windows 95 onward, Microsoft included extensive support for 3D graphics with its DirectX interface, meaning that video gamers no longer had to exit to DOS and fiddle with command line settings for high performance gaming.

PC 显卡公司享有的规模经济给专业工作站公司敲响了最后一根丧钟。Silicon Graphics 于 2009 年破产清算。Sun 明智地将重点转向互联网服务器。但在那里，来自 PC 平台的竞争最终也赶上了它。甲骨文于 2010 年收购了 Sun。

The economies of scale enjoyed by PC graphics card companies put the final nail in the coffin of the specialist workstation companies. Silicon Graphics liquidated in 2009. Sun smartly shifted its focus to Internet servers. But there, too, competition from PC platforms eventually caught up with it. Oracle absorbed Sun in 2010.

3D 登陆游戏机

3D Comes to Games Consoles

游戏机让 3D 图形无处不在。单个游戏机的生命周期至少为五年，因为公司投入巨额资金设计和制造数百万台游戏机以收回这些成本。第一代具有 3D 图形功能的游戏机包括 1996 年推出的 Nintendo 64，它基于 Silicon Graphics 处理器和图形芯片。熟悉的任天堂角色，如马里奥和林克（塞尔达系列的英雄）突然在 3D 场景中移动，需要彻底重新思考游戏机制和用于在平台上跳跃或瞄准怪物的控制系统。索尼的第一款游戏机 PlayStation 也具有同样深远的影响。

Games consoles made 3D graphics ubiquitous. Individual consoles have life cycles of at least five years, as companies invest huge sums to design and manufacture millions to recoup those costs. The first generation of consoles with 3D graphics capabilities included the Nintendo 64, launched in 1996, which was based on Silicon Graphics processor and graphics chips. Familiar Nintendo characters like Mario and Link (hero of the Zelda series) were suddenly moving around in 3D landscapes, requiring a complete rethinking of game mechanics and the control systems used to jump around platforms or target monsters. Sony’s first console, the PlayStation, was equally influential.

这一时期的热门游戏确立了主导电子游戏行业的游戏类型、惯例和品牌，直到今天。《古墓丽影》（1996 年）将逻辑问题包装成印第安纳琼斯电影的性别转换版，开创了一系列续集和大制作电影。这些续集和大制作电影讲述了劳拉·克劳馥的故事，她的体格与芭比娃娃的相似令人难以置信且备受争议。《生化危机》（ 1996 年）将僵尸杀戮与解谜和恐惧相结合，确立了“生存恐怖”类型。它催生了一系列平庸的电影，这些电影的票房总收入超过 10 亿美元。《半条命》 （1998 年）将《毁灭战士》和《雷神之锤》的第一人称射击游戏机制与更复杂的谜题和强大的叙事融合在一起，激发了许多模仿者。类似技术也应用于《彩虹六号》系列游戏（也是 1998 年），并启发了长期流行的《战地》（2002 年）和《使命召唤》（2003 年）系列。《侠盗猎车手 III》（2001 年）让玩家在一个以纽约为原型、细节精美的虚构城市中自由行动。游戏中有任务和强大的故事情节，但玩家记住的是，他们可以自由地扮演无忧无虑的罪犯，随意探索繁忙的城市，碾压无辜者，偷车或枪杀妓女。

Hit games from this period established the genres, conventions, and brands that dominate the video game industry to this day. Tomb Raider (1996) dressed up logic problems in a gender-switched pastiche of the Indiana Jones movies, inaugurating a series of sequels and big-budget movies. These told the story of Lara Croft, whose physique implausibly and controversially resembled a Barbie doll. Resident Evil (1996) mixed zombie killing with puzzle solving and scares to establish the “survival horror” genre. It spawned a series of determinedly mediocre movies that have collectively earned well over a billion dollars at the box office. Half Life (1998) melded the first-person shooter mechanics of Doom and Quake with more complex puzzles and a strong narrative, inspiring many imitators. Similar technology was applied to realistic tactical combat in the Rainbow Six series of games (also 1998), inspiring the long-running Battlefield (2002) and Call of Duty (2003) franchises. Grand Theft Auto III (2001) set players loose in a beautifully detailed fictional city modeled on New York. There were missions and a strong storyline, but what players remembered was the freedom to explore a busy city as carefree criminals, running over innocents, stealing cars, or shooting prostitutes as they wished.

当时的热门游戏并非全部都是 3D 游戏。暴雪娱乐公司制作了大获成功的《魔兽争霸》（1994 年）和《星际争霸》（1998 年）系列游戏。这些游戏将战略元素（研究技术、收集资源、建造设施）与实时战斗相结合。《星际争霸》在首次发布时就成为了当年的 PC 热门游戏，但对于一款电子游戏来说，在接下来的十年里，它的销量甚至更高，这很不寻常。《星际争霸》的故事情节很强大，但它的独特之处在于它是一款多人游戏，这要归功于互联网竞赛的出现以及局域网派对的持续流行。在韩国，它建立了第一个职业电子游戏玩家社区，他们通过参加电视比赛谋生。

Not all the hit games of the period were 3D based. Blizzard Entertainment created the hugely successful WarCraft (1994) and StarCraft (1998) series of games. These combined strategic elements—researching technology, gathering resources, building facilities—with real-time combat. StarCraft was the PC smash hit of the year on its initial release, but unusually for a video game sold even more copies over the next decade. StarCraft had a strong scripted storyline, but its unique success was as a multiplayer game, thanks to the new availability of Internet-based contests as well as the continuing popularity of LAN parties. In South Korea it established the first community of professional video gamers, earning their livings by playing televised tournaments.

随着时间的推移，游戏机逐渐向 PC 靠拢。它们从卡带转向光盘来分发游戏，并采用与 PC 相同的图形芯片。微软 2001 年推出的 Xbox 就是一个典型例子（图 11.9）。它基于奔腾 III 处理器、硬盘驱动器、Nvidia 图形单元和 DVD-ROM 播放器——这是同一时代游戏 PC 的典型设备。它运行的是一个定制的操作系统，与 Windows 元素密切相关。甚至名称（DirectX Box 的缩写）也推广了 Windows 游戏技术。许多用户发现，一个黑盒子可以放在电视机下，用视频游戏手机从沙发上控制，这比摆弄 PC 并坐在显示器前玩游戏更方便、更轻松。

Over time, consoles evolved closer to PCs. They shifted from cartridges to optical discs for game distribution, and adopted the same graphics chips as PCs. Microsoft’s Xbox, launched in 2001, exemplifies this (figure 11.9). It was based on a Pentium III processor, a hard disk drive, an Nvidia graphics unit, and a DVD-ROM player—typical equipment for a gaming PC of the same era. It ran a customized operating system closely based on elements of Windows. Even the name, a contraction of DirectX Box, promoted a Windows gaming technology. Many users found a black box, ready to be placed under a TV and controlled from the sofa with video game handsets, more convenient and relaxing than fiddling around with a PC and sitting up at a monitor to play games.

那些愿意投入足够时间和金钱的人可以在具有更好图形的普通电脑上运行大多数游戏，但 Xbox 为开发人员提供了一个标准平台，他们可以自信地将其发挥到极致。最成功的 Xbox 游戏《光环：战斗进化》是首批成功重塑精确鼠标控制的游戏之一类似于《雷神之锤》的第一人称射击游戏，适用于游戏机的控制杆。它巧妙地将激烈的战斗和可驾驶的车辆结合在一起，支撑了一系列续集。

Those willing to invest enough time and money could run most games on a regular PC with better graphics, but the Xbox provided a standard platform for developers that they could confidently push to its limits. The most successful Xbox game, Halo: Combat Evolved, was one of the first to successfully reinvent the precise mouse control of first-person shooters like Quake for the control sticks of games consoles. Its unsubtle mix of frenetic combat and drivable vehicles has sustained a long series of sequels.

Xbox 既不是轰动一时的产品，也不是失败之作，但微软从 Office 和 Windows 获得的现金流使其能够在不立即获得回报的情况下投资该系统。在 Xbox 生命周期的早期，微软愿意以低于零部件成本的价格出售 Xbox，并在随后几年随着零部件价格下跌收回损失。售价高达 60 美元的游戏的高利润率进一步抵消了补贴硬件。为了防止用户购买盒子并将其擦干净以用作廉价电脑，微软安装了一个数字签名执行芯片。这旨在使用户定制自己的硬件成为非法行为，这引起了围绕 Xbox 和后续几代游戏机的争议和诉讼。Linux 黑客最终打破了保护^。52

The Xbox was neither a smash hit nor a flop, but Microsoft’s cash flows from Office and Windows let it invest in the system without immediate payback. Microsoft was willing, early in its life cycle, to sell the Xbox for less than the cost of its parts, recouping the losses in subsequent years as component prices fell. High profit margins on games that were sold for up to $60 each further offset the subsidized hardware. To prevent users from buying the box and wiping it clean for use as a cheap computer, Microsoft installed a digital signature enforcement chip. This was intended to make it illegal for users to customize their own hardware, which caused controversy and lawsuits around the Xbox and subsequent generations of consoles. Linux hackers eventually defeated the protection.⁵²

到 2006 年，当微软用改进的 Xbox 360 取代原版 Xbox 时，它已经远远落后于当前 PC 机型的性能。此后，这一循环不断重演，四代 Xbox 和 PlayStation 争夺铁杆游戏玩家的青睐。任天堂则走上了不同的方向，以更具创新性的方式包装功能较弱的技术。其 2006 年推出的 Wii 游戏机通过提供独特的动作感应无线控制器扩大了市场。这些控制器可以像棒球棒一样挥舞，像枪一样指向，或像方向盘一样转动。其许多最受欢迎的游戏都是以运动和健身为基础的，让用户站起来在客厅里跳舞，而不是瘫坐在沙发上^。53

By 2006, when Microsoft replaced the original Xbox with the improved Xbox 360, it had fallen well behind the power of current PC models. The cycle has since repeated itself, with four generations of Xboxes and PlayStations competing for the affection of hardcore gamers. Nintendo went in a different direction, packaging less powerful technology in more innovative ways. Its Wii console, introduced in 2006, expanded the market by offering unique motion-sensitive wireless controllers. These could be swung like a baseball bat, pointed like a gun, or turned like a steering wheel. Many of its most popular titles were sport and fitness based, inviting users to get up and dance around their living rooms rather than slump on the couch.⁵³

超文本

Hypertext

Web 将信息构建为超文本的基本概念可以追溯到 Vannevar Bush，他在 1945 年发表了一篇开创性的文章，讨论了微缩胶片和电子设备构建带有可导航链接注释的大型个人文档库的潜力。5^这对 Ted Nelson 产生了重大影响。6^他自费出版的宣言《计算机解放/梦想机器》将超文本定义为“根据请求分支或执行的写作形式；它们最好在计算机显示屏上呈现。” ⁷ Nelson 还称赞了 Engelbart 的在线系统 (NLS)，该系统主要围绕层次大纲，但也包括链接机制。8^纳尔逊在 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代一直致力于实现一个雄心勃勃的在线超文本发布系统 Xanadu，但没有成功。他一直对学术界有影响力，但始终游离于学术界之外，激励着一个活跃的超文本研究者社区^。9

The Web’s fundamental concept of structuring information as hypertext goes back to Vannevar Bush, whose seminal 1945 essay discussed the potential of microfilm and electronics to build huge personal libraries of documents annotated with navigable links.⁵ This had a major influence on Ted Nelson.⁶ His self-published manifesto Computer Lib/Dream Machines defined hypertext as “forms of writing which branch or perform on request; they are best presented on computer display screens.”⁷ Nelson also praised Engelbart’s On-Line System (NLS), which was structured primarily around hierarchical outlines but also included a linking mechanism.⁸ Nelson worked unsuccessfully through the 1970s and 1980s to make an ambitious online hypertext publishing system Xanadu come to life. He remained influential on, but always outside, the academic community, inspiring an active community of hypertext researchers.⁹

超文本出版被用于技术文档，包括帮助系统和参考手册。然而，创建超文本作品非常困难。1987 年，苹果公司的 Bill Atkinson 通过 Macintosh 的 Hypercard 向更广泛的用户和应用程序开放了这项技术。Hypercard 易于掌握，即使是计算机新手也可以编写简单的游戏或教育材料。1990 年，随着 Windows 3.0 的推出，更多的人通过 Windows 在线帮助系统接触到了超文本，该系统为操作系统及其应用程序提供了电子文档。CD-ROM 参考书也是如此，包括流行的 Encarta 百科全书。能够交叉链接主题对于这些应用程序至关重要，但与 Web 上的链接不同，它们的链接仅扩展到同一电子书中的其他页面。

Hypertext publishing was adopted for technical documentation including help systems and reference manuals. Creating hypertext works was difficult, however. In 1987, Apple’s Bill Atkinson opened up the technology to a much broader range of users and applications with Hypercard for the Macintosh. Hypercard was easy to grasp and let even a computer novice program simple games or educational materials. More people were exposed to hypertext via the Windows online help system introduced with Windows 3.0 in 1990, which provided electronic documentation for the operating system and its applications. So did CD-ROM reference books, including the popular Encarta encyclopedia. Being able to cross-link topics was vital for these applications, but unlike links on the Web, their links extended only to other pages within the same electronic book.

Gopher 和 WAIS

Gopher and WAIS

20 世纪 90 年代初的互联网发展如此迅速，甚至连专家都难以掌握其不断扩大的工具、协议、文件传输站点、远程登录服务和新闻组集合。它开始感觉像一个没有卡片目录的大型图书馆。明尼苏达大学的程序员对此做出了回应，创建了 Gopher。10 Gopher 允许学生和教职员工轻松查找信息，例如课程表、管理政策声明和体育赛事。这个名字是一个双关^语，将大学吉祥物应用于一个可以“寻找”数据并检索数据的程序。Gopher 将信息显示为层次树中的菜单菜单。当它传播到其他组织时，用户可以跟踪从一个 Gopher 系统到另一个 Gopher 系统的链接。Gopher 于 1991 年 4 月发布。到 1994 年 4 月，网上大约有七千台 Gopher 服务器。

The Internet of the early 1990s was growing so rapidly that even experts found it hard to stay on top of its expanding collection of tools, protocols, file transfer sites, telnet services, and newsgroups. It began to feel like a large library that had no card catalog. Programmers at the University of Minnesota responded by creating Gopher.¹⁰ Gopher allowed students and faculty to easily locate information such as class schedules, administrative policy statements, and sporting events. The name was a pun, applying the University mascot to a program that would “go fer” the data and retrieve it. Gopher displayed information as menus of menus in a hierarchical tree. When it spread to other organizations, users could follow links from one Gopher system to another. Gopher was released in April 1991. By April 1994 there were around seven thousand Gopher servers online.

在超级计算机公司 Thinking Machines，布鲁斯特·卡尔和他的同事开发了一个名为广域信息服务 (WAIS) 的系统，允许用户搜索文件内容。WAIS 在互联网上搜索文档并对其内容进行索引，展示了 Thinking Machines 超级计算机的强大处理能力。WAIS 并不容易学习，但当它工作并准确检索到用户想要查找的内容时，它令人惊叹不已。Gopher 的发展在 Veronica 建立后加速，Veronica 是一项类似的服务，它对“gopherspace”进行索引，以便用户可以按术语搜索信息以及浏览层次结构。

At the supercomputer company Thinking Machines, Brewster Kahle and his colleagues developed a system called wide area information service (WAIS) that allowed the user to search the contents of files. WAIS scoured the Internet for documents and indexed their content, showcasing the heavy-duty processing power of the Thinking Machines supercomputers. WAIS was not easy to learn, but when it worked and retrieved exactly what a person wanted to find, it took one’s breath away. Gopher’s growth had accelerated after the establishment of Veronica, a similar service that indexed “gopherspace” so that users could search for information by terms as well as navigating through hierarchies.

网络的起源

Origins of the Web

Gopher 和 WAIS 被互联网资源的新界面所取代：万维网 (World Wide Web) 的超文本系统。万维网远远没有达到尼尔森对超文本的设想，但与当时的其他超文本系统相比，它向前迈出了一大步：因为它在互联网上运行，所以链接可以很容易地指向另一台计算机上的页面，就像指向同一台计算机上的页面一样。伯纳斯-李 (Berners-Lee)（图 12.2）在 1990 年底编写了最初的万维网原型，他表示：“万维网的主要目标是成为一个共享的信息空间，通过它人和机器可以进行通信。” ¹¹它组织了现有的互联网资源，例如新闻组和文件传输站点。

Gopher and WAIS were rendered obsolete by a new interface for Internet resources: a hypertext system called the World Wide Web. The Web fell far short of Nelson’s vision for hypertext, but it took one great step forward in comparison with other hypertext systems of the era: because it ran on the Internet, a link could point to a page on another computer just as easily as one on the same computer. Berners-Lee (figure 12.2), who wrote the original Web prototype in late 1990, stated that “[t]he Web’s major goal was to be a shared information space through which people and machines could communicate.”¹¹ It organized existing Internet resources, such as newsgroups and file transfer sites.

伯纳斯-李与 CERN 办公计算系统小组组长罗伯特·卡里奥合作，开发并推广了三项简单但有效的标准，这些标准定义了 Web。通用资源标识符，后来称为统一资源定位符(URL)，可以“指向信息世界中的任何文档（或任何其他类型的资源）”。¹² Web 链接是两种现有的指定 Internet 位置的方式的简单组合：计算机名称（用 DNS 的约定表示）和文件位置（以 Unix 路径表示）。为了将信息从 Web 服务器传输到 Web 浏览器，伯纳斯-李和卡里奥创建了简单的超文本传输 协议(HTTP)，它依赖于现有的互联网协议。最后，他们定义了一种超文本标记语言(HTML)，用于标记具有超文本特征（如链接和标题）的文档。这也是基于现有技术，即使用元数据标记文本的标准通用标记语言(SGML) 方法。

Berners-Lee worked with Robert Cailliau, leader of CERN’s Office Computing Systems group, to develop and promote three simple but effective standards that defined the Web. The universal resource identifier, later called the uniform resource locator (URL), could “point to any document (or any other type of resource) in the universe of information.”¹² Web links were a simple combination of two existing ways of specifying a location on the Internet: a computer name (expressed with the conventions of DNS) and a file location (expressed as a Unix path). To transfer information from Web servers to Web browsers Berners-Lee and Cailliau created the simple hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), which relied on existing Internet protocols. Finally, they defined a hypertext markup language (HTML) to tag documents with hypertext features like links and headings. That too was based on an existing technology, the standard generalized markup language (SGML) approach to tagging text with metadata.

万维网起初发展缓慢，因为 Gopher 起步较早，最初更受欢迎。要查看网络资料，人们需要使用一种称为浏览器的程序。伯纳斯-李自己的浏览器是一个基于鼠标的应用程序，能够显示图形。它的用户可以创建和更新网页以及查看网页，这是他最初的网络愿景的核心部分。他使用 NeXT 工作站开发了它，利用其面向对象的工具进行快速应用程序开发。依靠 NeXT 软件，他可以快速制作出原型浏览器，但这也限制了该浏览器的潜在用户数为几千人。最广泛使用的早期网络浏览器，包括一个名为 Lynx 的文本模式程序，显示的屏幕与 Gopher 的类似，带有编号菜单选项。13^这些都是基于 CERN 编写的代码，并分发给网络访问。

The World Wide Web grew slowly at first, as Gopher had a head start and initially remained more popular. To view Web materials, one used a program called a browser. Berners-Lee’s own browser was a mouse-based application able to display graphics. Its users could create and update Web pages as well as view them, a central part of his original vision for the Web. He had developed it with a NeXT workstation, taking advantage of its object-oriented tools for rapid application development. Relying on the NeXT software let him produce a prototype browser quickly, but it also limited that browser to a few thousand potential users. The most widely used early Web browsers, including a text-mode program called Lynx, instead presented screens similar to Gopher’s, which had numbered menu selections.¹³ These were based on code written at CERN and distributed to spread Web access.

图形化 Web 浏览器

Graphical Web Browsers

一小群 Web 爱好者知道，需要为广泛使用的平台提供强大的图形浏览器。其中一位是伊利诺伊大学的学生马克·安德森 (Marc Andreesen)，他在美国国家超级计算机应用中心工作，该中心由美国国家科学基金会资助，旨在让互联网用户能够使用超级计算机。1993 年 6 月，安德森和该中心的 Unix 专家埃里克·比纳 (Eric Bina) 发布了浏览器的测试版，后来他们将其命名为 Mosaic。Mosaic 将文本和图像无缝集成，使 Web 的潜力立即显现出来（见图12.3）。14^第一批 Mosaic 用户是已经拥有功能强大的 Unix 工作站和快速互联网连接的人，他们大多在大学和研究实验室。它的出现加速了 Web 的发展。麻省理工学院一名学生编写的网络爬虫程序在 1993 年中期仅发现了 130 台活跃的 Web 服务器，但在当年年底再次运行时，发现了 623 台^。15

The small community of Web enthusiasts knew that it would need robust graphical browsers for widely used platforms. One of them was Marc Andreesen, a student at the University of Illinois with a job at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, funded by the NSF to make supercomputers accessible to Internet users. By June 1993, Andreesen and Eric Bina, a Unix staff specialist at the center, had released a test version of a browser that they later named Mosaic. Mosaic’s seamless integration of text and images made the potential of the Web instantly apparent (see figure 12.3).¹⁴ The first Mosaic users were people who already had powerful Unix workstations and fast Internet connections, found mostly in universities and research labs. Its availability accelerated the Web’s growth. A web crawler program created by an MIT student discovered only 130 active Web servers in mid-1993, but 623 when it was run again at the end of that year.¹⁵

领导 NCSA 的 Larry Smarr 利用其资源推广 Mosaic，并迅速为 Windows 和 Macintosh 电脑制作了版本，大大拓宽了其潜在用户群。《连线》杂志热情洋溢地表示：“Prodigy、AOL 和 CompuServe 突然都过时了，而 Mosaic 正在成为世界标准界面。……超文本的全球网络不再只是一个很酷的想法。” ¹⁶

Larry Smarr, who led NCSA, used its resources to promote Mosaic and rapidly produce versions for Windows and Macintosh computers, greatly broadening its potential user base. Wired Magazine enthused that “Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe are all suddenly obsolete—and Mosaic is well on its way to becoming the world’s standard interface.… The global network of hypertext is no longer just a very cool idea.”¹⁶

1994 年初，刚离职的 Silicon Graphics 创始人 Jim Clark 找到了 Andreesen。他们共同创立了 Netscape Communications Corporation，并决定将类似 Mosaic 的浏览器作为他们的第一款产品。Clark 和 Andreesen 聘请了许多曾在大学开发该软件的程序员。Netscape 于 1994 年 9 月推出了 Navigator 浏览器。迅速取代 Mosaic 成为最常用的 Web 浏览器，利用 Web 本身作为商业软件分发的新渠道^。17

In early 1994, Andreesen was approached by Jim Clark, the recently departed founder of Silicon Graphics. Together they founded what became the Netscape Communications Corporation and decided on a Mosaic-like browser as their first product. Clark and Andreesen hired many of the programmers who had worked on the software at the university. Netscape introduced its Navigator browser in September 1994. It quickly supplanted Mosaic as the most used Web browser, taking advantage of the Web itself as a new channel for commercial software distribution.¹⁷

Netscape 帮助维持了 Web 发布业务的指数级增长，到 1994 年底，服务器数量已超过 10,000 台。在接下来的六个月中，服务器数量再次翻了一番，到 1995 年 6 月达到 23,500 台。随后，Windows 95 诞生，它内置了 TCP/IP 堆栈、拨号网络和多任务处理功能。现在，价格实惠的个人计算机可以轻松地在大彩色屏幕上运行 Netscape，并通过电话线提供可接受的速度。互联网变成了另一种东西。它不再仅仅是计算技术的一个方面，而是娱乐、消费者支出和流行文化的一部分。第 100 万台 Web 服务器上线于 1997 年 3 月左右，第 1000 万台上线于 2000 年 12 月^。18

Netscape helped to sustain the exponential growth of Web publishing to more than 10,000 servers by the end of 1994. That doubled again in the next six months, reaching 23,500 in June 1995. Then along came Windows 95 with its built-in TCP/IP stack, dial-up networking, and multitasking capabilities. Affordable personal computers could now easily run Netscape on a big color screen, delivering tolerable speeds over a telephone line. The Internet became something else. It was no longer only a facet of computing technology but a part of entertainment, consumer spending, and popular culture. The millionth Web server came online around March 1997, and the 10 millionth by December 2000.¹⁸

互联网服务提供商

Internet Service Providers

随着网络吸引越来越多的用户使用互联网，互联网服务提供商的数量也几乎以同样快的速度增长。AT&T 于 1995 年推出的 Worldnet 服务为互联网接入设定了事实上的标准——每月 20 美元即可无限使用调制解调器。它在全国范围内开设了接入点，以便大多数潜在客户只需拨打本地电话即可使用该服务。AOL 和 MSN 迅速将自己重塑为互联网服务公司，提供网页浏览和其他互联网服务以及专有内容。

As the Web drew ever more users to the Internet the number of Internet service providers grew almost as rapidly. AT&T’s Worldnet service, launched in 1995, set a de facto standard for Internet access—unlimited modem access for $20 a month. It opened up access points across the country, so that most potential customers could access the service with a local phone call. AOL and MSN hurriedly remade themselves as Internet service companies, offering Web browsing and other Internet services as well as their proprietary content.

到 1996 年 6 月，AOL 用户数达到 620 万，成为最大的在线服务提供商，但面对来自低端市场的竞争，其增长速度开始放缓。互联网公司。同年年底，AOL 改为每月 20 美元的固定费用，以适应许多互联网服务提供商的定价模式。使用量激增一度使其接入点不堪重负，但该公司的增长率再次跃升。19^到1999年 6 月，它拥有 2000 万活跃客户。20许多用户几乎不了解 AOL 和互联网之间的区别。

AOL reached 6.2 million users by June 1996, making it the largest online service provider, but its growth was beginning to slow in the face of competition from lower priced Internet firms. At the end of that year AOL switched to a flat monthly fee of $20 to match the pricing model of many Internet service providers. A surge in usage overwhelmed its access points for a while, but the firm’s growth rate jumped again.¹⁹ By June 1999, it had twenty million active customers.²⁰ Many of its users barely understood the difference between AOL and the Internet.

虽然大多数客户选择大型 ISP，例如 AT&T 或 AOL，但大多数 ISP 规模都小得多，为当地社区提供服务。有些 ISP 改组为公告板服务。在高峰期，即 2000 年 3 月，Boardwatch杂志列出了超过七千家向美国公众销售互联网接入的公司^。21

Although most customers chose large ISPs, such as AT&T or AOL, most ISPs were much smaller operations, serving local communities. Some were converted bulletin board services. At the peak, in March 2000, Boardwatch magazine listed more than seven thousand firms selling Internet access to the American public.²¹

其他应用

Other Applications

20 世纪 90 年代中期，大多数新互联网用户都过于沉迷于网络，以至于他们几乎意识不到这种新应用程序与其所运行的互联网之间的区别。互联网公司通常会引导用户访问一些网站，从这些网站上他们可以下载 20 世纪 90 年代中期互联网的其他工具：Usenet 新闻阅读器、电子邮件客户端、聊天程序、telnet 终端式客户端等等。尽管用于在聊天室中交换实时消息的现有互联网中继聊天系统很受欢迎，但其他面向消费者的消息传递系统也如雨后春笋般涌现。

Most of the new Internet users of the mid-1990s were so centered on the Web that they had little sense of the difference between this new application and the Internet it ran on. Internet companies typically pointed users toward sites from which they could download the other tools of the mid-1990s Internet: a Usenet newsreader, an email client, a chat program, a telnet terminal-style client, and so on. Although the established Internet Relay Chat system, for exchanging real-time messages in chat rooms proved popular, other consumer-oriented messaging systems sprang up.

这些服务比传统电子邮件传递短信的速度更快，非常适合以对话方式交换信息。这些服务特别受青少年欢迎，是电话聊天的替代方式。其中最受欢迎的 AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) 因其与 AOL 软件的集成而迅速获得采用。AOL 为各种平台（包括早期的手持电脑）制作了免费消息软件，供那些从其他地方访问互联网的人使用。雅虎和微软都运营着自己成功的消息服务，尽管 AOL 于 1998 年收购了最成功的独立竞争对手以色列平台 ICQ（“我寻找你”）。

These delivered short messages more quickly than traditional email, ideal for exchanging messages in a conversational style. The services were particularly popular with teenagers as an alternative to chatting on the telephone. The most popular of these, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) won quick adoption thanks to its integration into AOL’s software. AOL produced free messenger software for a variety of platforms, including early handheld computers, for those who got their Internet access elsewhere. Yahoo and Microsoft both ran their own successful messaging services, though AOL bought out the most successful independent rival, the Israeli platform ICQ (“I seek you”), in 1998.

游戏公司也迅速挖掘了互联网用户群迅速增长的潜力。尽管 20 世纪 80 年代的一些在线服务已经提供在线游戏，但是要与其他用户玩常规 PC 游戏，需要通过串行电缆将计算机连接在一起，或者如我们之前在《毁灭战士》的案例中提到的那样，需要临时局域网。在连接互联网的 PC 上运行的游戏让玩家可以与数十万其他玩家共享游戏世界。新模式由Ultima Online于 1997 年推出，它是 Apple II 时代一系列计算机角色扮演游戏的衍生产品。由于游戏世界由数据中心维护，玩家可以相互交流以交易或合作完成任务，从而增加了面对面角色扮演游戏的社交元素。无论他们是否登录，游戏都会继续进行，并且他们角色所采取的操作（例如建造城堡）成为游戏世界的永久组成部分。

Game companies were also quick to exploit the potential of rapidly growing base of Internet users. Although some 1980s online services had offered online games, playing regular PC games against other users had required hooking computers together with serial cables or as we mentioned earlier in the case of Doom, ad hoc local area networks. Games running on Internet connected PCs let players share game worlds with hundreds of thousands of other players. The new model was launched by Ultima Online in 1997, a spin-off from a series of computer roleplaying games going back to the Apple II. Because the game world was maintained in a data center, players could interact with each other to trade or collaborate on quests, adding the social elements of a face-to-face roleplaying game. The game progressed whether they were logged in or not, and the actions their characters took, like building a castle, became a permanent part of the game world.

在巅峰时期，这款游戏拥有约 25 万名玩家，每位玩家每月支付订阅费。玩家用游戏在线经济中的物品换取数百万美元的真金白银，低薪的中国“金农”每天花大量时间点击无聊的琐事，赚取游戏币，然后在 eBay 上卖给西方玩家。即使是那些为了娱乐而玩游戏的人，也倾向于投入大量精力，每周花费数十个小时来积累他们在线角色的虚拟权力和财富。记者朱利安·迪贝尔是早期基于文本的多人在线游戏的资深玩家，他描述了一位玩家的生活，他决心赚取足够的游戏币来购买一大块虚拟土地，“他必须将尼尔斯·汉森的锻造技能提升到大师级。为了达到这一水平，斯托勒花了六个月的时间，除了锻造什么都不做：他点击山坡来开采矿石，前往锻炉将矿石锻成锭，再次点击将锭变成武器和盔甲，然后回到山上重新开始，每次都将尼尔斯的技能水平提高百分之几。……每一天，每个月，一个男人都要用锤子和钉子重复一整天的令人筋疲力尽的劳动，然后整晚用“锤子”和“铁砧”重复麻木的劳动——为此每月支付 9.95 美元。” ²²

At its peak, the game had around a quarter million players, each paying a monthly subscription fee. Items in the game’s online economy were traded by players for millions of dollars of real money, and low-paid Chinese “gold farmers” spent long days clicking through mind-numbingly boring chores to generate in-game currency to be sold to Western players on eBay. Even people playing the games for fun tended to settle into an all-consuming worklike routine, spending dozens of hours each week to build the virtual power and wealth of their online characters. As journalist Julian Dibbell, a veteran of early text-based multiplayer online games, described the life of one player determined to generate enough in-game cash to buy a large plot of imaginary land, “he had to bring Nils Hansen’s blacksmithing skills up to Grandmaster. To reach that level, Stolle spent six months doing nothing but smithing: He clicked on hillsides to mine ore, headed to a forge to click the ore into ingots, clicked again to turn the ingots into weapons and armor, and then headed back to the hills to start all over again, each time raising Nils’ skill level some tiny fraction of a percentage point.… Every day, month after month, a man was coming home from a full day of bone-jarringly repetitive work with hammer and nails to put in a full night of finger-numbingly repetitive work with ‘hammer’ and ‘anvil’—and paying $9.95 per month for the privilege.”²²

网络的局限性

The Limitations of the Web

Web 最初是一个非常简单的系统，这是不可避免的，因为 CERN 的项目资源有限，而且最初用于对互联网现有资源进行分类。与泰德·尼尔森不同，伯纳斯-李并没有试图开发一个可以让在线出版具有经济可行性的商业系统。与学术超文本研究人员社区不同，他并没有试图解决随着时间的推移保持超链接最新和准确的棘手问题。

The Web began as a very simple system, which was inevitable given the limited resources available for the project at CERN and its initial use to catalog the Internet’s existing resources. Unlike Ted Nelson, Berners-Lee wasn’t trying to produce a commercial system that could make online publishing economically viable. Unlike the community of academic hypertext researchers, he wasn’t trying to solve the knotty problems involved in keeping hyperlinks current and accurate as time goes by.

Web 只是 Internet 现有基础设施上的薄薄一层。由于没有中央超链接数据库，用户可以从页面中跟踪链接，但无法从另一个方向查看链接到页面的所有内容。在创建和单击链接的这段时间内，它指向的页面可能已被编辑以删除相关信息或完全删除。网页上的大多数外部链接最终都会停止工作。Ted Nelson 和 Doug Engelbart 是 Web 最严厉的批评者之一。Nelson 甚至不认为 Web 是真正的超文本。Xanadu 应该永远保留页面的旧版本，以便链接的材料始终可用。甚至 Tim Berners-Lee 也抱怨说，他的愿景只有一半随着 Netscape 等商业浏览器的出现而实现。他最初想要一个既易于书写又易于浏览的^Web。27

The Web was just a thin layer on top of the Internet’s existing infrastructure. Because there was no central database of hyperlinks, users could follow links out from a page but not go the other way to see everything that linked to a page. Between the time a link was created and clicked, the page to which it pointed might have been edited to remove relevant information or deleted completely. Most of the external links on Web pages eventually stop working. Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart were among the Web’s harshest critics. Nelson didn’t even consider the Web to be true hypertext. Xanadu was supposed to hold old versions of a page forever, so that the linked material would always be available. Even Tim Berners-Lee complained that only half of his vision had come true with commercial browsers like Netscape. He initially wanted a Web that was as easy to write to as it was to surf.²⁷

Web 还缺乏内置的搜索功能。早期的电子出版平台（如 LEXIS-NEXIS 数据库服务和 AOL）使用集中式服务器。出版商必须正确标记信息并以标准化格式提供信息。这使得在线出版变得困难，但搜索和索引却很容易。有了 Web，情况就逆转了。出版变得非常简单——只需在一台联网的计算机，并将一些 HTML 文件放在一个目录中。因此，搜索和索引网络非常具有挑战性。

The Web also lacked a built-in search capability. Earlier electronic publishing platforms, like the LEXIS-NEXIS database service and AOL, used centralized servers. Publishers had to tag information correctly and provide it in a standardized format. This made online publishing hard, but searching and indexing easy. With the Web, that was reversed. Publishing was trivially easy—just start a small Web server daemon program on an Internet-connected computer and throw some HTML files in a directory. For that reason, searching and indexing the Web was enormously challenging.

同样重要的是缺乏支付系统。纳尔逊曾设想过作者和出版商从书籍和报纸转向他的 Xanadu 系统。为了使这在经济上可行，纳尔逊规定了一种机制，即读者每读一页就支付小额费用，其中一部分将作为报酬转给作者。AOL 和 Minitel 等在线服务向用户收取连接时间和高级服务费用，并与通过其平台发布信息的外部公司分摊收益。网络使出版变得容易，但付款却很难。欧洲核子研究中心和其他物理研究中心免费提供用公共资金制作的出版物。《纽约时报》和 CNN 等新闻出版商被网络的受欢迎程度所吸引，开始免费提供他们的故事，但从长远来看，这种做法可能会摧毁他们的业务。

Just as important was the lack of a payment system. Nelson had imagined authors and publishers shifting from books and newspapers to his Xanadu system. To make this economically viable, Nelson mandated a mechanism whereby readers made small micropayments for each page read, a portion of which would be passed on to authors as payment. Online services like AOL and Minitel charged users for connect time and premium services, splitting the proceeds with the outside companies publishing information through their platforms. The Web made publication easy but payment hard. CERN and other physics research centers gave away their publications, which had been produced with public funds. News publishers like the New York Times and CNN were attracted by the Web’s popularity to start giving away their stories, but in the long term this practice threatened to destroy their businesses.

人们提出了许多不同的计划来解决这些缺陷，但由于网络是围绕现有的互联网技术构建的，因此要解决这些问题，就需要对整个互联网进行全面重新设计，而不仅仅是网络。出现的解决方案既复杂又不完整。例如，WAIS 的创建者 Brewster Kahle 针对链接失效或指向早已更改的页面的问题。2001 年，他的互联网档案小组推出了 Wayback Machine，可以访问已保存的网站静态副本。保存网络是一项了不起的工程壮举，通过输入旧链接，有时可以检索到它曾经访问过的页面。但档案是零散的：它保存了某些网站，但没有保存其他网站，保存了某些页面，但没有保存其他页面，即使是在一个网站内也是如此。对于不太受欢迎的网站，快照之间要间隔数月甚至数年。

Many different initiatives were proposed to tackle these shortcomings but because the Web was built around existing Internet technologies, it would have taken a full-scale redesign of the entire Internet, not just the Web, to fix them. The solutions that emerged were complex and partial. For example, the problem of links going bad or pointing to pages that had long-since changed was targeted by Brewster Kahle, the creator of WAIS. In 2001, his Internet Archive group launched a Wayback Machine that provided access to saved static copies of Web sites. Preserving the Web is a remarkable feat of engineering, and by entering an old link one can sometimes retrieve the page it used to go to. But the archive is fragmentary: it holds some sites but not others, and some pages but not others, even within a website. For less popular sites, months or sometimes years go by between snapshots.

搜索——网络缺失的环节

Search—The Web’s Missing Links

浏览器这个词体现了伯纳斯-李希望人们使用他的发明的方式：点击链接从一个页面跳转到另一个页面，就像在市场上从一个摊位逛到另一个摊位。目录页面使用超文本来构建临时目录。随着网络的扩展，这种方式变得不可行。任何进入网络的行为都可能让探索者被深奥话题的琐事轰炸。但找到一个特定问题的答案确实很难。一位科学作家沮丧地放弃了互联网：“我曾短暂地与多家互联网提供商签约，但却被网络令人抓狂的随机性所激怒。”他抱怨说：“复杂的搜索……感觉是在浪费时间。” ²⁸

The word browser captures the way that Berners-Lee expected people to use his creation: clicking links from one page to another was like browsing a market from one stall to the next. Directory pages used hypertext to build ad hoc catalogs. As the Web expanded, this became less viable. Any foray onto the Web was likely to bombard the explorer with trivia on esoteric topics. But finding the answer to a specific question could be hard indeed. One science writer had abandoned the Internet in frustration: “I have briefly signed up with a number of Internet providers, only to become exasperated by the maddening randomness of the Net.” He complained that “the complicated searches … feel like a waste of time.”²⁸

网络是一个不断发展的图书馆，没有参考馆员、质量控制或卡片目录。解决这个问题最自然的方法是创建一个充满指向其他网站的链接的网站：一个带有索引和分层主题的虚拟图书馆目录标题。雅虎（或称“雅虎”）是其中最成功的，由斯坦福大学学生戴夫·费罗和杨致远于 1994 年创立，名为《杰里万维网指南》。他们最初自己编制索引，随着网络的扩展，雇佣了越来越多的人来跟上。访问是免费的。1995 年 8 月，该网站开始投放广告以创造收入，虽然有人抱怨，但这项服务仍然很受欢迎。29^它得到了 Netscape 的早期推动，后者在自己的网站上放了一个链接。1996 年 4 月，雅虎首次公开募股，为其初始投资者提供了快速回报，并巩固了其作为领先互联网公司的地位（图 12.4）。那时，雅虎雇用了 50 名全职员工来浏览网页并更新其目录。他们很难跟上网站激增的步伐^。30

The Web was an ever-growing library without reference librarians, quality control, or a card catalog. The most natural way to fix this was to produce a site full of links to other sites: a virtual library catalog complete with index and hierarchical subject headings. Yahoo (or as it branded itself, “Yahoo!”), the most successful of these, was founded in 1994 by Stanford University students Dave Filo and Jerry Yang as Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web. They originally assembled its index themselves, hiring ever more people to keep up as the Web expanded. Access was free. When in August 1995 the site began running advertisements to generate revenue, a few complained but the service remained popular.²⁹ It got an early boost from Netscape, which put a link to it from its own site. In April 1996, Yahoo made an initial public offering of stock, providing a rapid payback for its initial investors and cementing its position as a leading Internet firm (figure 12.4). By then Yahoo employed fifty full-time staff to surf the Web and update its directory. It was hard for them to keep up with the proliferation of websites.³⁰

随着网络的发展，雅虎方法的局限性很快就显现出来。用户必须点击多层级的主题标题才能找到他们感兴趣的网站。雅虎对整个网站而不是页面进行分类——如果用户正在寻找一个热门话题的网站（例如布兰妮·斯皮尔斯的最佳粉丝网站），这种方法还不错，但如果搜索的是提到某本书的页面，这种方法就没那么有用了。

As the Web grew, the limitations of the Yahoo approach soon became apparent. Users had to click through many levels of subject headings to find the site they were interested in. Yahoo cataloged entire sites rather than pages—fine if the user was looking for a website on a popular topic (such as the best Britney Spears fan site) but less useful if the search was for pages mentioning a particular book.

像雅虎这样的目录网站面临着来自搜索引擎日益激烈的竞争，搜索引擎使用软件机器人（robot的缩写）来抓取网站并索引每个页面的内容。为了发挥作用，搜索引擎必须抓取尽可能多的网络内容，跟踪从一个站点到另一个站点的链接，以找到要索引的晦涩页面。它还必须通过该索引进行闪电般的搜索，提取包含短语的所有页面并决定首先向用户显示哪些页面。

Directory sites like Yahoo faced growing competition from search engines, which used a software bot (short for robot) to crawl through Web sites and index the content on each page. To be useful, a search engine had to crawl as much of the Web as possible, following links from one site to another to track down obscure pages for indexing. It also had to deliver lightning-fast searches through that index, pulling all the pages holding a phrase and deciding which to show to the user first.

搜索引擎的早期领导者是 Altavista，由数字设备公司的硅谷实验室创立。Altavista 擅长查找包含搜索词的页面，但在决定首先向用户显示哪些页面方面却很糟糕。例如，它认为搜索词在页面代码中出现的次数越多，该页面就越相关。结果就是搜索引擎垃圾：不道德的网络出版商会通过在只有搜索引擎可见的文本中重复数百次热门搜索词来吸引流量到他们的页面 - 例如，在黑色背景上用微小的黑色文本。Altavista 与雅虎一样，没有改善其搜索结果，而是专注于成为一个网络门户，其主页上包含从天气到星座等各种信息和服务。这使得它不美观且加载速度很慢。

The early leader in search engines was Altavista, founded by the Silicon Valley lab of Digital Equipment Corporation. Altavista was good at finding pages holding search terms but terrible at deciding which pages it would show first to users. For example, it assumed that the more often the search term appeared in the code for a page the more relevant that page was. The result was search engine spam: unscrupulous Web publishers would draw traffic to their pages by repeating popular search terms hundreds of times in text visible only to search engines—for example, in tiny black text on a black background. Rather than improve its search results, Altavista, like Yahoo, focused on becoming a Web portal with a home page holding a grab bag of information and services from weather to horoscopes. This made it unsightly and slow to load.

搜索引擎似乎已被垃圾邮件发送者击败。1999 年，搜索引擎分析师丹尼·沙利文大胆宣布：“这是人类胜利的一年。[以前] 主要的搜索服务 Yahoo 使用人工对网站进行分类，而其他搜索服务则试图使用技术来做同样的事情。但现在，前十名服务中有六家，主要结果将由人工完成。” ³¹就在他写作时，搜索机器人正在对人工索引器发起决定性的反击。Altavista 的用户转向了新的竞争对手 Google，该公司由谢尔盖·布林和拉里·佩奇创立，当时他们还是斯坦福大学计算机科学专业的研究生。Google 的巨大优势在于弄清楚如何对包含搜索词的页面进行排名，它通过偏爱被大量其他网站链接的网站来实现这一点。垃圾邮件页面不太可能被链接，因此排名垫底。

It seemed that search engines had been beaten by spammers. In 1999, search engine analyst Danny Sullivan boldly announced that “This was the year that the humans won. [Earlier] you had one major search service, Yahoo, that used human beings to categorize sites while the others were trying to use technology to do the same thing. But now with six out of the top ten services, the main results you get will be by people.”³¹ Even as he wrote, search robots were mounting a decisive counterattack against the human indexers. Altavista’s users were shifting to a new rival, Google, founded by Sergei Brin and Larry Page, who were then graduate students in Stanford’s computer science program. Google’s big advantage came in figuring out how to rank the pages that held a search term, which it did by favoring websites that had been linked to by large numbers of other sites. Spam pages were unlikely to be linked to and therefore fell to the bottom of the rankings.

这种方法的灵感来自尤金·加菲尔德开发的科学信息检索系统，即科学引文索引。该系统对科学论文进行索引，并通过记录有多少其他论文引用了这些论文来对其影响力进行排名。这一方法以及数千种旨在提高搜索相关性和打击垃圾邮件的其他调整意味着 Google 提供的前几个搜索结果很可能提供用户所需的信息。Google 还实施了激进的简单性主页上只有一个框，用于输入搜索词，还有两个按钮，分别标有“谷歌搜索”和“手气不错” ^。32

This method was inspired by a system for the retrieval of scientific information developed by Eugene Garfield, called the Science Citation Index. It indexed scientific papers and ranked their impact by noting how many other papers referenced them. This, and thousands of other tweaks designed to improve the relevance of searches and defeat spam, meant that the first few search results provided by Google were likely to provide the information sought by a user. Google also enforced an aggressive simplicity on its home page which meant it was attractive and quick to load, consisting of little more than a box in which to enter search terms and two buttons, labeled Google Search and I’m Feeling Lucky.³²

谷歌和雅虎等网络搜索和目录公司，以及一大批不太成功的竞争对手，都曾是规模最大、实力最强的互联网公司。这可以追溯到网络发布的简单、分散的本质，正是这种本质让网络一开始就一跃成为主导。网页不必用元数据标记来识别作者或主题等。它们出现在互联网上的任何地方，不必报告给任何集中式目录或数据库。有数百万台网络服务器，许多服务器每隔几分钟就会更新其内容。使在网络上发布内容变得容易的一切，都使索引或编目变得困难。无论是像雅虎过去那样依靠人力，还是像谷歌那样依靠算法，这都是一项艰巨的任务，需要大量资金和人才。

Web search and directory companies like Google and Yahoo, and a host of less successful rivals, were among the largest and most powerful Internet companies. This goes back to the simple, decentralized nature of Web publishing that let the Web leap to dominance in the first place. Web pages do not have to be tagged with metadata to identify, for example, authors or subjects. They show up anywhere on the Internet and do not have to be reported to any centralized catalog or database. There are millions of Web servers, many updating their content every few minutes. Everything that makes publishing to the Web easy makes indexing or cataloging it hard. Whether with humans, as Yahoo used to do, or with algorithms, as Google does, that is an enormous task requiring vast amounts of money and human talent.

网络支付

Web Payments

网络的兴起与亚马逊、Zillow 等公司通过将人类互动的各个方面计算机化来赚钱的努力密不可分。我们无法在此讲述所有这些故事，因此我们只能关注互联网和网络如何发展成为可以支持各种活动的通用平台。早期的网络主要是一种电子出版系统，用于发布和查看静态页面。Minitel 和 AOL 可以向读者收取费用，并与出版商分享收益。由于互联网并非为商业用途而设计，因此它和网络都没有提供任何类似的机制让网站向读者收费。传统出版的经济学相对简单：出版商从每本书或唱片的销售中赚钱。销售更多副本意味着赚更多钱，因此每个热门作品都承担了许多失败作品的成本。相比之下，一个受欢迎的网站在网络带宽和服务器方面花费了巨额费用，却没有从读者那里获得任何收入来弥补这笔费用。吸引更多读者意味着更大的损失，而不是更大的利润。

The rise of the Web is inseparable from the efforts of companies, from Amazon to Zillow, to make money by computerizing every aspect of human interaction. We cannot tell all those stories here and so instead focus on the development of the Internet and the Web into universal platforms that could underpin diverse activities. The early Web was primarily an electronic publishing system, used to publish and view static pages. Minitel and AOL could bill the accounts of readers and share the proceeds with publishers. Because the Internet had not been designed for commercial use, neither it nor the Web provided any comparable mechanism for a website to charge its readers. The economics of conventional publishing were comparatively straightforward: publishers made money on each book or record sold. Selling more copies meant making more money, so that each hit underwrote the cost of many flops. In contrast, a popular website ran up huge bills for network bandwidth and servers without receiving any income from readers to cover this expense. Grabbing more readers meant bigger losses, not bigger profits.

一些公司开始创建电子现金系统，将 Ted Nelson 的微支付方案应用于网络，为商业网络出版奠定了坚实的基础。这些公司依靠加密技术创建安全高效的计费系统，以支持非常小的交易。这项技术已经存在，但要让它成为一项业务，需要浏览器制造商、互联网用户和互联网出版商同时进行调整。即使在 1995 年，这样的飞跃也是不可行的。加密最终使网络浏览器能够安全地传输信用卡详细信息——但即使愿意输入信用卡详细信息来购买一双鞋的用户也会因为花五美分阅读新闻而犹豫不决。无论如何，交易费用使得信用卡无法用于非常小的支付。

Several companies were launched to create electronic cash systems, adapting Ted Nelson’s micropayments scheme to the Web to provide a sound foundation for commercial Web publishing. These relied on encryption techniques to create secure and efficient billing systems to support very small transactions. The technology existed, but making it work as a business required simultaneous adaptations by browser makers, Internet users, and Internet publishers. Even in 1995 such a jump wasn’t feasible. Encryption eventually gave Web browsers the ability to transmit credit card details securely—but even users willing to enter credit card details to buy a pair of shoes would balk at doing so to pay five cents to read a news story. In any event, transaction fees made credit cards unworkable for very small payments.

网站可以尝试销售订阅，而不是单个故事。这种方法最初在两个领域奏效。色情推动了互联网的商业化，就像它推动了早期的视频录制和电影一样。33^如果网络冲浪者输入www .whitehouse .com而不是www .whitehouse .gov，他们就会被带到一个通过销售色情内容月度订阅而赚取数百万美元的网站。人们愿意付费的另一种网络内容是金融信息。例如，《金融时报》从未向非订阅者提供完整的报道。

Websites could try to sell subscriptions rather than individual stories. That initially worked in two areas. Pornography drove much of the commercialization of the Internet, just as it did the early days of video recording and of motion pictures.³³ If Web surfers typed in www.whitehouse.com instead of www.whitehouse.gov, they were taken to a site that made millions of dollars by selling monthly subscriptions to pornographic materials. The other kind of Web content people were willing to pay for was financial information. The Financial Times, for example, never made full stories available to nonsubscribers.

缺乏支付机制并没有减缓网络出版的发展。业余爱好者喜欢创造能够吸引成千上万访问者的内容，现有的出版物希望成为网络革命的一部分并吸引新的受众，而资金雄厚的风险投资家和技术公司则决定先培养受众，然后再考虑经济效益。例如，Slate于 1996 年作为微软支持 MSN 的一个项目成立。在前《新共和》编辑迈克尔·金斯利的指导下，它最初将政治和文化杂志的做法移植到网上。有一段时间，它甚至推出了印刷版，在星巴克门店出售。

The lack of a payment mechanism didn’t slow the growth of Web publishing. Amateurs loved the idea of creating something that could draw thousands of visitors, existing publications wanted to be part of the Web revolution and reach new audiences, and deep-pocketed venture capitalists and technology companies decided to build audiences first and worry about the economics later. For example, Slate began in 1996 as a project of Microsoft to bolster MSN. It began by transplanting the practices of a politics and culture magazine online, under the direction of former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley. For a while it even created a print edition, to be sold in Starbucks stores.

广告

Advertising

网络出版的经济模式不是订阅或小额支付，而是围绕广告发展起来的。出版商会为展示的每一页获得一笔小额付款，但付款人是广告商而不是读者。34^向广告的转变有利于能够吸引广告商兴趣并部署广告服务器技术的大型商业网站。相比之下，业余网络出版商很难从他们的作品中获利，无论他们的网站有多受欢迎。

Instead of subscriptions or micropayments, the economics of Web publishing developed around advertising. The publisher would receive a tiny payment for each page displayed, but from an advertiser rather than the reader.³⁴ The shift to advertising favored large, commercial Web sites able to attract the interest of advertisers and deploy ad server technologies. In contrast, amateur Web publishers had no easy way to profit from their work, however popular their sites.

例如，微软取消赞助后， Slate不得不靠广告维持运营。1998 年， Slate曾尝试限制订阅用户访问，但只吸引了两万名读者，因此被迫放弃。Slate 历经数次改头换面，依然广受欢迎，并因其新闻报道而屡获殊荣，不过其最成功的作者往往会转向其他渠道，因为在线广告无法提供曾经成功的纸质杂志所享有的支持。（Slate 的付费墙于 2020 年重新出现，因为广告收入下降迫使许多在线出版物要求常客购买订阅。）

Slate, for example, had to support itself with advertising once Microsoft’s patronage was withdrawn. An experimental effort to limit access to subscribers, in 1998, was abandoned when it attracted only twenty thousand readers. Slate remains popular through several reinventions, winning awards for its journalism, although its most successful writers tend to move on to other venues because online advertising provides nothing like the support once enjoyed by successful print magazines. (Slate’s paywall returned in 2020, as falling advertising revenues forced many online publications to ask frequent readers to purchase subscriptions.)

谷歌和搜索广告

Google and Search Advertising

网络目录和搜索引擎特别适合吸引广告。到 20 世纪 90 年代末，据估计，仅三家公司就占据了所有在线广告收入的 43%：AOL、雅虎和微软。35^互联网导航公司拥有显著的商业优势：他们知道访问者在任何特定时刻都在想什么。谷歌最有效地利用了这些信息。2000 年，它开始销售广告，采用一种名为 AdWords 的方式。Google 意识到用户不喜欢大型、分散注意力的广告，并且不会信任仅因为用户付费才显示顶级结果的搜索服务。相反，Google 只显示一个付费结果，明确标记为“赞助链接”，以及一些简单的广告，每个广告由三行简短的文字组成，分组显示在屏幕的单独部分^。36

Web directories and search engines were particularly well placed to attract advertisements. By the late 1990s, just three firms were estimated to be receiving 43 percent of all online advertising revenues: AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft.³⁵ Internet navigation companies had a significant commercial advantage: they knew what their visitors were thinking about at any given moment. This information was harnessed most effectively by Google. In 2000, it began selling advertisements, with an approach it called AdWords. Google realized that users disliked large, distracting advertisements and would not trust a search service in which the top results appeared only because users had paid for them. Google instead presented a single paid result, clearly labeled as a “sponsored link,” and a handful of simple advertisements, each consisting of three short lines of text, grouped in a separate part of the screen.³⁶

广告商在线输入竞价，以便在用户搜索特定术语时显示其广告。Google 从互联网广告先驱 Overture.com 那里复制了这一理念及其按点击付费模式，即只有当浏览者点击广告时，广告商才能获得报酬。在决定显示哪些广告时，Google 的算法会考虑广告的点击频率以及广告商的出价金额。Google 日益增长的知名度以及展示与用户正在研究的内容直接相关的广告的能力使其广告获得了极高的利润。事实上，其广告的稀疏性通过减少供应量提高了其价值。

Advertisers entered bids online to display their ads when particular terms were searched for. Google copied this idea and its pay-per-click model, in which advertisers are paid only when a viewer clicks an advertisement, from an Internet advertising pioneer called Overture.com. In deciding which ads to display, Google’s algorithms factored in how often advertisements were clicked on as well as the amount bid by the advertiser. Google’s increasing popularity and ability to show advertisements directly related to whatever its users were researching made its advertising exceptionally profitable. Indeed, the very sparseness of its ads raised their value by decreasing the supply.

到 2006 年，谷歌的广告销售额已经远远超过其他任何互联网公司，并超越了传统媒体巨头，如广播电视网络和甘尼特（拥有包括《今日美国》在内的一百多家日报、二十三个电视台和一千多家其他期刊）。37^大部分收入并非来自 Google.com，而是来自其他网站上的广告。自 20 世纪 90 年代中期以来，专业的网络广告公司已开始批量销售广告空间。由于浏览器没有变化，网络出版商可以在网站上部署广告服务器程序，将横幅广告和弹出广告整合到交付的每个网页中。广告公司控制着显示哪些广告以及在哪里显示。谷歌的 AdSense 系统改进了这一概念，提供与其自己网站上相同的竞价系统和按点击付费模式。38^收入由谷歌和显示广告的网站运营商分享。这有助于将网络出版的经济模式重新转向规模较小的业余和半专业企业。 （它还催生了一个新的、利润丰厚的行业，这些网站只包含 Google 广告链接，这些广告链接放置在有吸引力但闲置的域名上，例如 clothes.com，或者通过错误输入更受欢迎的域名而到达的 nytomes.com、yagoo.com 或 ebey.com 等网站上。）

By 2006, Google was selling far more advertising than any other Internet firm and had overtaken traditional media powerhouses such as the broadcast television networks and Gannett (owner of more than a hundred daily newspapers including USA Today, twenty-three television stations, and more than a thousand other periodicals).³⁷ Much of the revenue came not from Google.com but from advertisements placed on other websites. Since the mid-1990s, specialist Web advertising firms had sold advertisement space in bulk. With no changes to browsers, Web publishers could deploy ad server programs on websites to incorporate banner and pop-up advertisements into each Web page delivered. The advertising company controlled which advertisements were shown and where. Google’s AdSense system refined the concept, offering the same bid system and pay-per-click model used on its own website.³⁸ Revenue is shared between Google and the operators of the websites where advertisements are displayed. This helped to shift the economics of Web publishing back toward smaller amateur and semiprofessional ventures. (It also created a new and hugely profitable industry of sites holding nothing but Google advertising links, placed on attractive yet vacant domains such as clothes.com or on sites such as nytomes.com, yagoo.com, or ebey.com that were reached by mistyping more popular domain names.)

动态页面生成

Dynamic Page Generation

许多早期的网站都是以在线杂志、报纸、书籍或展览的形式构建的。这些都遵循了网络作为超文本发布系统的最初想法。其他网站则通过销售商品来赚钱。它们更像是邮购目录——用户浏览商品页面，找到感兴趣的商品，然后填写表格，用信用卡付款。正如我们之前所讨论的，网络缺乏专家们需要的搜索、小额支付和永久链接等功能思想对于任何公共超文本系统都是必不可少的。作为在线业务平台，它的能力就更差了。任何旨在支持在线销售的网站都必须能够根据购物者的需求定制至少部分页面。购物者必须能够选择他们的购买，查看确认信息，输入送货和付款详细信息，并收到收据。能够按名称搜索产品也会很有帮助。

Many early websites were structured as online magazines, newspapers, books, or exhibitions. These followed the original idea of the Web as a hypertext publishing system. Other sites were established to make money by selling goods. They were more like mail-order catalogs—users browsed merchandise pages, identified items of interest, and filled in a form to pay for them with a credit card. As we discussed previously, the Web lacked features like searching, micropayments, and permanent links that experts thought were essential for any public hypertext system. As a platform for online business, it was even less capable. Any website designed to support online sales had to have the capability to customize at least some of its pages, depending on what a shopper was looking for. Shoppers had to be able to choose their purchases, see a confirmation, enter shipping and payment details, and receive a receipt. Being able to search for products by name would also be helpful.

然而，电子商务网站迅速涌现，推动了网络向更商业化的方向发展。最早也是最受欢迎的网站之一是亚马逊，它于 1994 年成立，最初是一家在线书店。它的网站与其他几家先锋在线商店一样，使用代码跟踪客户购物过程，并在购物车页面上累积他们的选择。这很快就成为在线销售的几乎通用模式。39^添加此类功能需要大量工作来扩展 Web 浏览器和 Web 服务器，以支持安全数据输入和动态页面生成。从一开始，Web 就具有的一个相关功能就是供用户输入数据的表单。这最初用于提供对 CERN 电话簿的访问。用户必须能够向 Web 服务器提交他们要搜索的姓名。服务器不会提供存储在磁盘上的页面，而是将查询传递给脚本，该脚本查询数据库，找到匹配的记录，并将结果格式化为浏览器的 HTML。⁴⁰ Web 浏览器的工作方式有点像终端，将用户的输入发送到远程计算机并显示其响应。

Nevertheless, e-commerce websites quickly emerged to push the development of the Web in more commercial directions. One of the first, and most popular, was Amazon.com, which began in 1994 as an online bookstore. Its website, like that of several other pioneering online stores, used code to track customers through a shopping session, accumulating their selections on a shopping cart page. That soon became an almost universal model for online sales.³⁹Adding features of this kind required a lot of work to extend Web browsers and Web servers to support secure data entry and dynamic page generation. The one relevant capability the Web did have, right from the beginning, was forms for users to enter data. This had first been used to provide access to the CERN telephone directory. Users had to be able to submit to the Web server the name they were searching for. Instead of delivering a page stored on disk, the server passed the query to a script that interrogated a database, found the matching records, and formatted the results as HTML for the browser.⁴⁰ The Web browser was working somewhat like a terminal, sending inputs from a user to a remote computer and displaying its responses.

随着时间的推移，越来越多的 Web 内容以动态方式生成，以便为特定用户提供个性化服务。例如，亚马逊开始在其主页上填充与每位客户的兴趣和先前搜索相关的项目。通过引入Cookie（存储在 Web 浏览器中的数据片段），这一功能变得更加容易，这样网站就可以识别回头客并轻松追踪其从一个屏幕到下一个屏幕的路径^。41

Over time, more and more of the Web was generated dynamically, to customize it for particular users. For example, Amazon began to fill its main page with items related to the interests and previous searches of each customer. This was made easier by the introduction of cookies—snippets of data stored in Web browsers so that a website could recognize a returning customer and easily trace her path from one screen to the next.⁴¹

每次交互都意味着重新加载整个页面。Web 用户通过在文本框中键入、单击单选按钮或从列表中选择值来填写预定义字段中的值。与大型机系统一样，在提交一组值和返回包含结果的自定义页面之间存在明显的延迟。单击一个按钮会将商品添加到购物车中。然后单击另一个按钮将启动结帐流程，该流程将经过几个数据输入屏幕来指定地址和信用卡详细信息。

Each interaction meant reloading the entire page. Web users filled values in predefined fields by typing in text boxes, clicking radio buttons, or choosing values from a list. As with a mainframe system, there was a noticeable lag between submitting a set of values and getting back the custom page holding the results. Clicking one button would add an item to a shopping cart. Then clicking another would start the checkout process, which would pass though several screens of data entry to specify address and credit card details.

早期的 Web 服务器依靠一种简单的机制来动态生成页面：URL 末尾的扩展名让服务器知道是从磁盘获取页面还是启动另一个程序来生成请求的 HTML 数据。早期的扩展名通常是 .pl，以将其标记为由名为 Perl 的程序解释的脚本。Perl 是由系统管理员 Larry Wall 于 1987 年开发的，它作为在 Unix 系统上自动执行任务的便捷方式迅速传播开来。由于大多数早期的 Web 服务器都在 Unix 机器上运行，因此 Perl 成为生成基于 CERN 电话簿的网页等任务的自然选择。它的编程语言借鉴了许多其他编程语言的功能，使其非常灵活，但它的特殊优势在于从输入文本中获取信息并进行处理。Perl 的设计初衷是快速编程，而不是执行效率或形式优雅。推广它的书《Perl 编程》开篇写道“Perl 是一种完成工作的语言”，然后承诺帮助读者“培养程序员的三大美德：懒惰、急躁和傲慢”。42 ¹⁹⁹⁸年，记者 Andrew Leonard 将 Perl 描述为“将整个网络粘合在一起的不可或缺的胶带或胶水”。43^许多大型网站，包括 Craigslist、Yahoo 和 Priceline.com，大部分都是用 Perl 编写的。

Early Web servers relied on a simple mechanism to generate pages dynamically: the extension at the end of the URL let the server know whether to fetch a page from disk or to launch another program to generate the requested HTML data. In the early days, that extension was most often .pl, to mark it as a script interpreted by a program called Perl. Perl had been developed by Larry Wall, a systems administrator, back in 1987, and it spread rapidly as a convenient way of automating tasks on Unix systems. As most early Web servers ran on Unix machines, Perl was a natural choice for tasks like generating Web pages based on the CERN telephone directory. Its programming language borrowed capabilities from many other programming languages, making it very flexible, but its particular strength is in grabbing information from input text and processing it. Perl was designed for quick programming rather than efficiency of execution or formal elegance. The book that popularized it, Programming Perl begins “Perl is a language for getting your job done,” then promises to help readers “develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.”⁴² In 1998, journalist Andrew Leonard described Perl as “the indispensable duct tape, or glue, that holds the entire Web together.”⁴³ Many large-scale websites, including Craigslist, Yahoo, and Priceline.com were coded largely in Perl.

加密

Encryption

除了动态页面生成之外，亚马逊等在线送货网站还依赖于一种安全的方式将数据从浏览器传输到服务器。网络流量与互联网上的其他一切一样，被分解成 TCP/IP 数据包。由于互联网的非商业性质，这些数据包没有加密。人们可以在它们前往服务器途中经过的任何网络中筛选出信用卡号或密码。

As well as dynamic page generation, online shipping sites such as Amazon depended on having a secure way to transmit data from browser to server. Web traffic, like everything else on the Internet, was broken up into TCP/IP data packets. Because of the Internet’s noncommercial origins, these packets were not encrypted. They could be sifted for credit card numbers or passwords by people in any of the networks they passed through en route to the server.

在互联网底层协议和基础设施中添加加密已经太迟了，但 HTTP 是一种不太成熟的协议。由于它运行在 TCP/IP 上，因此无需修改网络设备即可进行扩展。HTTPS 于 1994 年由 Netscape 首次部署，它在应用程序和互联网之间添加了一层新的代码：安全套接字层(SSL)。

It was too late to add encryption to the Internet’s underlying protocols and infrastructure, but HTTP was a much less mature protocol. Because it ran over TCP/IP, it could be extended without having to modify networking equipment. HTTPS, first deployed by Netscape in 1994, added a new layer of code between applications and the Internet: the secure sockets layer (SSL).

SSL是 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代在公钥加密方面取得的一系列突破的成果，它被打包供公众使用。该技术是随 RSA 算法（以 Ron Rivest、Adi Shamir 和 Leonard Adelman 的名字命名）引入的。早期的一个应用是电子邮件的 PGP 系统。希望接收安全消息的人会共享一个公钥，用于加密发送给他们的消息。这些消息只能使用相应的私钥解密，而收件人会保密私钥。Web加密方案比 PGP 更复杂，因为数据包需要在两个方向上加密。这依赖于另一种称为 Diffie-Hellman 密钥交换（以 Whitfield Diffie 和 Martin Hellman 的名字命名）的技术，以便在启用加密之前安全地协商会话的加密密钥。网站必须通过共享数字证书来证明他们提供的密钥的真实所有权。数字证书由 Verisign 颁发，该公司是从 RSA Security 分离出来的。 RSA 和 Diffie-Hellman 团队均因在保护电子通信安全方面取得的成就而荣获图灵奖。美国政府不断努力限制强加密技术的可用性和出口，导致与网络自由主义者社区的冲突不断。其中一场战斗是关于强制使用 Clipper Chip 的努力，执法官员可以恢复其密钥，这场战斗在 1994 年达到顶峰，当时网络刚刚开始腾飞。44^经过这一切，大多数在线用户发现加密太复杂了，无法保护他们的电子邮件信息。

SSL packaged for public use the results of a series of breakthroughs in public key encryption made during the 1970s and 1980s. The technique was introduced with the RSA algorithm (named after Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman). One early application was the pretty good privacy (PGP) system for email messages. Someone wishing to receive secure messages shares a public key used to encrypt the messages heading for them. These can be decrypted only with the corresponding private key, which the recipient keeps secret. The scheme for Web encryption was more complicated than PGP, as packets needed to be encrypted in both directions. This relied on another technique called Diffie-Hellman key exchange (named after Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman) to safely negotiate an encryption key for a session before encryption was turned on. Websites had to prove the authentic ownership of the keys they provided by sharing a digital certificate. The digital certificates were issued by Verisign, a company spun out from RSA Security for the purpose. Both the RSA and Diffie-Hellman teams won Turing awards for their achievements in securing electronic communication. The US government made ongoing efforts to restrict the availability and export of strong encryption, leading to repeated clashes with the cyberlibertarian community. One of those battles, over an effort to mandate use of a Clipper Chip whose keys were recoverable by law enforcement officials, peaked in 1994 just as the Web began to take off.⁴⁴ Through all this, most online users found encryption too complicated to bother protecting their email messages.

要使网络足够安全以处理支付，就意味着要找到一种无缝地将加密技术嵌入浏览器和服务器的方法。但一开始却很艰难。美国政府最初禁止出口能够使用更难破解的 128 位密钥的 Netscape 版本。数字证书让用户感到困惑。早期版本中发现了严重的安全漏洞，因此必须迅速更换。网站运营商经常让证书过期，从而导致令人困惑的警告。然而，随着时间的推移，SSL 及其后继者成为互联网体验中无缝的一部分。它们不仅用于银行和购物应用程序，还用于帮助不太敏感的网站（如《纽约时报》和维基百科）保护用户隐私并防止篡改。随着用户从有线连接转向无线网络（窃听极其容易），这一点变得尤为重要。

Making the Web secure enough to handle payments meant finding a way to build encryption seamlessly into browsers and servers. That got off to a rocky start. The US government initially forbade export of versions of Netscape able to use harder-to-crack 128-bit keys. The digital certificates were confusing to users. Serious security flaws were discovered in early versions, necessitating their rapid replacement. Website operators often let their certificates expire, causing confusing warnings. Over time, however, SSL and its successors became a seamless part of the Internet experience. They spread beyond banking and shopping applications, to help less sensitive websites like those of the New York Times and Wikipedia protect user privacy and guard against tampering. This became particularly important as users shifted from wired connections to wireless networks, upon which eavesdropping is absurdly easy.

Netscape 的早期领先

Netscape’s Early Lead

任何配置良好的个人电脑都已经安装了 Microsoft Windows、Microsoft Office Suite 和防病毒程序。1995 年，网络浏览器似乎即将成为每个计算机用户购买的第四大必备软件。Netscape 采用了经典共享软件商业模式：Navigator 可以免费下载，但商业用户必须在试用期后注册并付费。基本价格为每份 99 美元，企业许可可享受折扣。45^收缩包装的副本可以在计算机商店中可以买到。46^它已经占领了 80% 的浏览器软件市场，超越了 Mosaic 和数十家试图销售浏览器的小公司。

Any well-equipped personal computer already had a copy of Microsoft Windows, a Microsoft Office Suite, and an antivirus program. In 1995 it seemed that a Web browser was about to become the fourth essential software purchase for every computer user. Netscape adopted a version of the classic shareware software business model: Navigator could be downloaded without payment, but commercial users were required to register and pay for the software after a trial period. The basic price was ninety-nine dollars a copy, with discounts for corporate licensing.⁴⁵ Shrink-wrapped copies could be purchased in computer stores.⁴⁶ It had locked up 80 percent of the market for browser software, having eclipsed Mosaic and dozens of smaller companies trying to sell browsers.

8 月 9 日，Netscape 上市，股价飙升，引起记者和投资者的狂热。投资者认为，Netscape 将成为互联网时代的微软——通过向网络出版商出售服务器软件和向公司和个人出售浏览器软件赚取巨额利润。它的软件存在于两个世界的交汇处：互联网世界是学术研究，其中代码通常是免费提供的；商业世界是个人电脑软件，其中大多数桌面或服务器软件都是用收缩包装盒购买的。Netscape 的支持者曾预计商业模式将适用于网络浏览器。事实证明他们错了，但我们为软件纳税而不是为网络浏览器纳税这一事实并非不可避免^。47

On August 9, Netscape went public, setting off a frenzy among reporters and investors as its stock soared. Netscape, investors believed, would be the Microsoft of the Internet era—earning huge profits by selling server software to Web publishers and browser software to companies and individuals. Its software existed at the intersection of two worlds: the Internet world of academic research in which code was usually given away, and the commercial world of personal computer software, in which most desktop or server software was purchased in shrink-wrapped boxes. Backers of Netscape had expected the commercial model to apply to Web browsers. They turned out to be wrong, but there is nothing inevitable about the fact that we pay for tax software but not for Web browsers.⁴⁷

微软的回应

Microsoft’s Response

微软希望确保自己是互联网时代的微软。它是一家竞争激烈的公司，已经击败了文字处理、电子表格、商业演示、编译器和数据库软件市场上一度占主导地位的对手。它正在推广自己的图形、桌面出版、多媒体和个人理财软件，以挑战独立 PC 软件公司可以赚取丰厚利润的少数剩余大众市场。

Microsoft wanted to make sure that it was the Microsoft of the Internet era. It was a deeply competitive company, which had already vanquished once-dominant foes in the markets for word processing, spreadsheet, business presentation, compiler, and database software. It was promoting its own graphics, desktop publishing, multimedia, and personal finance packages to challenge the few remaining mass markets where independent PC software companies could earn healthy profits.

微软在开发 Windows 95 时就考虑到了互联网，借用了 BSD Unix 的 TCP/IP 数据包的可靠代码，并集成了通过拨号调制解调器链路运行这些数据包所需的功能。它可以顺利地执行多任务，运行捆绑的电子邮件或终端仿真软件以及用户正在处理的其他任何任务。事实上，Windows 95 CD 包含了除 Web 浏览器之外的所有基本互联网工具。相反，微软正在大力推广自己的 MSN 在线服务。微软已获得 Mosaic 代码的许可，以生产一个简单的浏览器 Internet Explorer (IE)，但它仅作为 Microsoft Plus 的一部分提供，Microsoft Plus 是一个奖励盘，旨在从热切的客户那里收取额外的 49.95 美元，以购买一系列有趣的额外内容，例如弹球游戏和桌面主题集。

Microsoft had the Internet in mind when developing Windows 95, borrowing solid code for TCP/IP data packets from BSD Unix, and integrated the capabilities needed to run those packets over a dial-up modem link. It could smoothly multitask, running bundled software for email or terminal emulation along with whatever else a user was working on. In fact, the Windows 95 CD included every essential Internet tool except for a Web browser. Instead, Microsoft was prominently promoting its own MSN online service. Microsoft had licensed the Mosaic code to produce a simple browser, Internet Explorer (IE), but it was available only as part of Microsoft Plus, a bonus disk designed to extract an additional $49.95 from eager customers for a grab bag of fun extras like a pinball game and set of desktop themes.

突然之间，网络似乎成了最大的机遇。1995 年 5 月，比尔·盖茨向他的高管同事们发送了一份如今已声名远播的备忘录，题为“互联网浪潮”。它警告说，“互联网对我们业务的每个部分都至关重要^……这是自 IBM PC 以来最重要的一项发展……微软正是以此为基础建立起自己的业务。”作为第一步，盖茨下令“尽快将 Plus 包中的所有互联网附加值转移到 Windows 95 中”。48改进的网络功能将成为所有新发布的微软应用软件的“最重要元素”，并使“每个产品计划都过度重视互联网功能”。盖茨甚至推迟出版他的书《未来之路》，以便在冗长的“信息高速公路”讨论中插入对互联网的引用^。49

Suddenly the Web seemed like the biggest opportunity of all. In May 1995, Bill Gates sent a now-famous memo entitled “The Internet Tidal Wave” to his fellow executives. It warned that “the Internet is critical to every part of our business … the most important single development … since the IBM PC” upon which Microsoft had built its business. As a first step, Gates ordered the shift of “all Internet value added from the Plus pack into Windows 95 as soon as we possibly can.”⁴⁸ Improved Web capabilities were to be “the most important element” of all new releases of Microsoft application software, and to make “every product plan go overboard on Internet features.” Gates even delayed publication of his book The Road Ahead to insert references to the Internet into its lengthy discussion of the “information highway.”⁴⁹

Internet Explorer 从 Microsoft Plus 的落后产品一跃成为该公司产品计划的核心。在 Windows 95 发布仅一年后，IE 3.0 版就为 Netscape 带来了第一个真正的竞争对手，这要归功于大约一百名程序员的努力。它对个人和企业免费，微软开始为 Windows 分发的 Web 服务器也是如此。这巩固了其在操作系统市场的主导地位，同时威胁到 Netscape 最明显的收入来源，从而威胁到其盈利计划。微软甚至开始免费提供 Macintosh 和 Unix 电脑的 Internet Explorer，以确保浏览器软件的商业市场永远不会出现^。50

Internet Explorer jumped from the backwaters of Microsoft Plus to the heart of the firm’s product plans. IE version 3.0, released just a year after Windows 95, gave Netscape its first real competition, thanks to the efforts of around a hundred programmers. It was free for personal or business use, as was the Web server that Microsoft began to distribute for Windows. This reinforced its dominant position in the operating system market, while threatening Netscape’s most obvious sources of revenue and hence its plans to become profitable. Microsoft even started giving away Internet Explorer for Macintosh and Unix computers to make sure that commercial markets for browser software never emerged.⁵⁰

新的浏览器功能

New Browser Capabilities

微软和网景之间的浏览器之战规模巨大。据报道，到 1999 年，微软有超过一千人致力于 Internet Explorer 的开发。当一支程序员队伍添加了一项新功能时，另一支程序员队伍会争相效仿。51 ^HTML标准由万维网联盟维护，该联盟由伯纳斯-李于 1994 年离开欧洲核子研究中心并转投麻省理工学院时创立。20 世纪 90 年代中期，该联盟发展迅速，经常逆向而行，以标准化微软或网景已经添加的新功能。利用新功能的网站会在其网站上添加“最适合使用 Netscape Navigator（或 Internet Explorer）浏览”的徽章，点击即可下载最新版本的浏览器。新增功能使网站能够更好地控制网页的外观：字体、文本大小、颜色、图形位置等。

The browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape were fought on a large scale. By 1999, Microsoft reportedly had more than one thousand people working on the development of Internet Explorer. When one army of programmers added a new feature, the other rushed to match it.⁵¹ The HTML standard was maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium, founded by Berners-Lee in 1994 when he left CERN and moved to MIT. In the mid-1990s it was evolving rapidly, often working backward to standardize new features that had already been added by Microsoft or Netscape. Websites taking advantage of new features included badges identifying their sites as “Best viewed with Netscape Navigator” (or Internet Explorer), which could be clicked to download the latest version of the browser. The additions gave sites more control over the appearance of Web pages: fonts, text size, color, placement of graphics, and so on.

浏览器集成了新功能。超链接一直能够链接到其他类型的 Web 资源，如 FTP 站点、Usenet 新闻组和电子邮件地址。早期的浏览器配置为在单击这些链接时打开其他软件，但微软和 Netscape 不想为其他软件公司提供这样的机会。两家公司都在其浏览器和软件包中添加了处理这些功能的功能。

Browsers integrated new capabilities. Hyperlinks had always been able to link to other kinds of Web resource, like FTP sites, Usenet newsgroups, and email addresses. Early browsers were configured to open other software when these links were clicked, but Microsoft and Netscape did not want to provide openings for other software companies. Both added features to their browsers and programs to their bundles to handle these functions.

两种主流浏览器都包含插件功能，以便其他公司可以生产软件作为浏览器的扩展，而不是独立的替代品。这是为网络添加功能的广泛实验时期。有些实验引起了短暂的兴奋，但失败了。Silicon Graphics 大力推动在网页中添加可探索的 3D 世界。在短暂的热情之后，这项技术成为网络交互的未来，事实证明它是一种笨拙的新奇事物。虚拟现实建模语言 (VRML) 从未成为浏览器的标准功能。相比之下，流式音频很快从一种新奇事物变成了互联网的核心用途。它由 1995 年推出的 RealAudio Player 软件包开创，用于流式传输音频来自广播电台和体育比赛。RealNetworks 免费提供此客户端软件，当有人点击音频流链接时触发。它通过销售编码音频流所需的服务器软件赚钱。20 世纪 90 年代末，Real 的技术在互联网流媒体领域占据主导地位，扩展到视频和音频，但随着微软和苹果免费生产自己的替代编码器，Real 的技术逐渐衰落。

Both major browsers included plug-in capabilities so that other companies would produce software as extensions to the browser rather than free-standing alternatives. This was a period of widespread experimentation to add capabilities to the Web. Some produced brief excitement and failed. Silicon Graphics made a big push for adding explorable 3D worlds to Web pages. After a short period of enthusiasm for this technology as the future of Web interaction, it proved to be a clumsy novelty. Virtual reality modeling language (VRML) never became a standard feature of browsers. In contrast, streaming audio quickly went from a curiosity to a core use of the Internet. It was pioneered by the RealAudio Player package, launched in 1995 to stream audio from radio stations and sports games. RealNetworks gave away this client software, triggered when someone clicked a link to an audio stream. It made money selling the server software needed to encode audio streams. Real’s technology dominated Internet streaming in the late 1990s, expanding to video as well as audio, but faded once Microsoft and Apple produced their own alternative encoders at no extra cost.

微软并不满足于仅仅开发更好的浏览器，它还想方设法利用其占主导地位的 Windows 和 Office 产品来击败 Netscape。微软在每台计算机上预装了 Internet Explorer，使其成为默认选择。它迫使 PC 公司停止在其计算机上分发 Netscape，并与 AOL 达成协议，将 Internet Explorer 设为其客户的默认浏览器。52^它将软件集成到 Windows 中，这样 Web 频道就可以将内容直接放在计算机桌面上，用户可以使用类似 Web 的界面浏览本地驱动器上的文件。一位技术记者表示，它“将触角伸入操作系统的每个部分，并会严重破坏您的计算机”，因为它“每隔三十分钟就会崩溃一次”。53^微软随后坚称，Internet Explorer 集成度如此之高，以至于从技术上讲不可能让用户删除它或替换其他浏览器。公司外部很少有人认为这种说法可信。

Not content just to build a better browser, Microsoft looked for ways to enlist its dominant Windows and Office products to beat Netscape. Microsoft preinstalled Internet Explorer on every computer, making it the default choice. It forced PC companies to stop distributing Netscape on their computers, and it made a deal with AOL to make Internet Explorer the default browser for its customers.⁵² It integrated the software into Windows, so that Web channels could place content directly onto the computer desktop and users could browse files on their local drives with a Web-like interface. One technology reporter suggested that it “sticks its tendrils into every part of your operating systems and will wreak havoc on your computer” with a “nasty habit of crashing every thirty minutes.”⁵³ Microsoft then insisted that Internet Explorer was so deeply integrated that it was technologically impossible to let users remove it or substitute another browser. Few outside the company found this claim credible.

微软在其 Office 软件中添加了仅适用于 Internet Explorer 的功能，因此希望利用这些功能的公司必须切换浏览器。它将 Word、Excel 和 PowerPoint 的新发现功能（将文档输出为网页）宣传为下一版 Office 的主要功能。它还收购了一个单独的 Web 编辑器程序 FrontPage。许多新功能需要使用 Microsoft 服务器才能正常运行，利用其桌面软件的流行度在蓬勃发展的企业内部网（基于 Internet 技术的内部网络）市场中建立更强大的地位。这些策略是其推动拥抱和扩展 Internet 技术的一部分，逐渐将其从开放标准转变为 Microsoft 控制的专有系统。

Microsoft added features to its Office software that worked only with Internet Explorer, so that companies wishing to take advantage of them would have to switch browsers. It marketed the newfound ability of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to output documents as Web pages as the key feature of the next release of Office. It also acquired a separate Web editor program, FrontPage. Many of the new features required the use of Microsoft servers to function properly, using the popularity of its desktop software to build a stronger position in the booming market for corporate intranets (internal networks based on Internet technologies). These tactics were part of its push to embrace and extend Internet technologies, gradually turning them from open standards into proprietary systems controlled by Microsoft.

网景公司失败

Netscape Loses

Netscape 在猛烈的攻击面前萎靡不振，犯下了一些重大错误。它为许多平台开发浏览器，将精力投入到晦涩难懂的 Unix 版本上，而这些精力本可以更好地用于改进核心产品。它将浏览器与电子邮件和编辑软件打包成一个套件，并向这些软件加载新功能，从而减慢了它们的运行速度。新版本在没有经过充分测试的情况下匆忙推出，导致它们臃肿且漏洞百出。到 1997 年 Netscape 4 与 IE 4 对抗时，评论者指出 Internet Explorer 比 Netscape Navigator 更快、更稳定。Netscape 在浏览器大战中落败并裁员，但这并没有阻止美国在线在 1999 年 3 月以价值超过一百亿美元的股票收购它^。54

Netscape wilted before the onslaught, making some significant mistakes. It produced browsers for many platforms, devoting effort to obscure versions of Unix that could have been better spent on improving core products. It packaged its browser into a suite with email and editing software, loading these with new features that slowed them down. New releases were rushed out without enough testing, leaving them bloated and buggy. By the time Netscape 4 went up against IE 4 in 1997, reviewers noted that Internet Explorer was faster and more stable than Netscape Navigator. Netscape was losing the browser wars and laying off employees, although that didn’t stop America Online acquiring it for stock worth more than ten billion dollars in March 1999.⁵⁴

这是 AOL 积极扩张的一部分，最终于 2001 年收购了全球最大的媒体公司时代华纳，控制了从 HBO 和 CNN 到华纳兄弟电影、《时代》杂志和《体育画报》等品牌。这标志着互联网相关股票 .com 泡沫（网址以 .com 结尾）的顶峰。投资者对互联网相关事物的持续兴趣将 AOL 和微软等知名公司的股价推高至天价，并为名不见经传的初创公司进行首次公开​​募股创造了现成的市场。风险资本家会为一个想法看似可行的公司提供资金，而不必过多担心它是否会盈利。只要该公司利用他们的投资迅速扩张，通过免费提供服务或亏本销售产品，就可以在一年内进行首次公开​​募股并获得丰厚的回报。这是典型的投机泡沫，当时人们认为这是“新经济”的产物，传统商业惯例和股票估值方法已经过时。2000 年中期，市场开始摇摇欲坠，次年崩盘，当时美国在线时代华纳合并案刚刚完成。在合并后的公司中，科技股市场整体崩盘，美国在线管理团队、收入和声誉的崩盘也反映了这一点。55 ²⁰⁰²年，该公司遭受了迄今为止最大的年度亏损，高达 987 亿美元，因为它注销了账簿上剩余的美国在线资产的几乎全部价值。

That was part of an aggressive expansion by AOL, which culminated with its 2001 acquisition of Time Warner, the world’s largest media company, controlling brands from HBO and CNN to Warner Brothers movies, Time magazine, and Sports Illustrated. This marked the high point of the dot-com (for URLs ending in.com) boom in Internet-related shares. The persistent appetite of investors for anything Internet related had pushed the stock prices of established companies, like AOL and Microsoft, up to stratospheric levels and created a ready market for initial public offerings by obscure start-up companies. Venture capitalists would fund a company with a plausible-seeming idea without worrying too much about whether it would ever make a profit. As long as it used their investment to expand rapidly, by giving away its services or selling products at a loss, the firm could make an initial public offering within a year and repay their investment handsomely. This was a classic speculative bubble, justified at the time through talk of a “new economy” in which traditional business practices and methods of stock valuation were hopelessly outmoded. The market began to teeter in mid-2000 and came crashing down the following year, just as the AOL Time Warner merger closed. Within the merged company, the broader collapse in the market for technology shares was mirrored by an implosion of AOL’s management team, revenues, and reputation.⁵⁵ In 2002, the firm suffered what remains to this day the biggest corporate annual loss ever, a remarkable $98.7 billion, as it wrote off almost the entire value of the AOL assets left on its account books.

美国在线的混乱无助于重振已陷入困境的 Netscape 浏览器。当美国在线最终于 2003 年解散 Netscape 时，承认失败，此时 Internet Explorer 已占据了 90% 以上的市场份额。微软冒着巨大的风险实现这一目标。美国政府和 20 个州于 1998 年起诉微软非法阻碍竞争。微软对 Netscape 的行动是该案的主要部分。当包括 Sun 和英特尔在内的多位行业高管出庭作证，指控其滥用职权时，该公司的公众形象受到了严重损害。微软的一些证据被篡改，几位高管显得傲慢或不可信。最严重的是，比尔·盖茨本人在作证时显得含糊其辞、不诚实，一再声称不记得自己电子邮件中描述的事件。56^这次审判成为盖茨的转折点，自 1995 年以来，他一直是世界上最富有的人。⁵⁷在此之后，他不再亲自管理微软，而是开始了第二职业，管理最终成为世界上最大的慈善基金会。

The chaos at AOL didn’t help efforts to revamp the Netscape browser, which had already bogged down. When AOL finally disbanded Netscape in 2003, conceding defeat, Internet Explorer had more than 90 percent of the market. Microsoft took great risks to accomplish this. The US government and twenty states sued Microsoft in 1998 for illegally thwarting competition. Its actions against Netscape were a major part of the case. When a parade of industry executives from firms including Sun and Intel testified to its abuses, the firm’s public image was badly shaken. Some of Microsoft’s evidence turned out to have been tampered with, and several of its executives appeared arrogant or untrustworthy. Most damagingly, Bill Gates himself appeared evasive and dishonest when deposed, repeatedly claiming not to recall events described in his own emails.⁵⁶ The trial proved a turning point for Gates, who since 1995 had been the richest person in the world.⁵⁷ In its aftermath he shifted away from hands-on management of Microsoft and toward a second career running what eventually became the world’s largest charitable foundation.

2000 年，法官托马斯·彭菲尔德·杰克逊 (Thomas Penfeld Jackson) 裁定微软使用反竞争手段维持个人电脑操作系统市场的垄断地位。它非法将 Internet Explorer 与 Windows 垄断地位捆绑在一起，通过采用掠夺性定价摧毁了浏览器市场：“微软支付了巨额费用^{微软公司在 2007 年的裁决中表示，微软公司“将向 Navigator 浏览器收取15} % 的费用，每年损失数百万美元，以诱使公司采取行动，帮助提高 Internet Explorer 在浏览器使用中的份额，而 Navigator 浏览器则要付出代价。” ⁵⁸杰克逊继续说，鉴于微软曾承诺永远不会对其浏览器收费，如果其目的是保护 Windows 垄断地位不受竞争对手应用程序平台的出现的影响，那么这“只能代表一项合理的投资”。59他下令将微软拆分为两个独立的公司，一个经营 Windows，另一个经营 Office 和其他应用程序，以防止它利用第一家公司的垄断地位在第二家公司打压竞争对手。微软提起上诉。在此过程完成之前，克林顿政府已经让位于更为保守的乔治·W·布什政府。微软被允许通过同意与其他公司共享其应用程序编程接口来解决此案，这样微软的应用程序就不会从访问秘密的 Windows 功能中受益。欧盟不那么同情微软，在 2006 年至 2013 年期间的一系列判决中对微软处以创纪录的数十亿美元罚款。

In 2000, Judge Thomas Penfeld Jackson ruled that Microsoft had used anticompetitive means to maintain a monopoly in the market for personal computer operating systems. It had illegally tied Internet Explorer to that Windows monopoly, destroying the browser market by adopting predatory pricing: “Microsoft paid vast sums of money, and renounced many millions more in lost revenue every year, in order to induce firms to take actions that would help enhance Internet Explorer’s share of browser usage at Navigator’s expense.”⁵⁸ Given that Microsoft had promised never to charge for its browser, Jackson continued, this could “only represent a rational investment” if its purpose was to protect the Windows monopoly from the emergence of a rival applications platform.⁵⁹ He ordered that Microsoft be split into two separate firms, one with Windows and the other with Office and other applications, to prevent it from using its monopoly in the first to crush competitors in the second. Microsoft appealed. Before the process could be completed, the Clinton administration had given way to the more conservative administration of George W. Bush. Microsoft was allowed to settle the case by agreeing to share its application programming interfaces with other firms, so that Microsoft applications would not benefit from access to secret Windows features. The European Union was less sympathetic, levying record fines totaling several billion dollars against Microsoft in a series of judgements between 2006 and 2013.

赢得浏览器大战后，微软宣布不再发布新浏览器，除非作为新版 Windows 的一个功能。在与 Netscape 长达六年的战争中，它发布了八个主要版本的 Internet Explorer，最终在 2001 年推出了 6.0 版。60^下一次重大升级是在整整五年后，由来自意想不到的来源的新竞争推动的。

Having won the browser wars, Microsoft announced an end to new browser releases except as a feature of new versions of Windows. It had released eight major versions of Internet Explorer during its six-year battle with Netscape, culminating in the arrival of version 6.0 in 2001.⁶⁰ The next major upgrade arrived a full five years later, prompted by the emergence of new competition from an unexpected source.

GNU不是Unix

GNU Is Not Unix

斯托曼的冒险之旅始于麻省理工学院人工智能实验室，该实验室是开发不兼容分时系统和针对 Lisp 进行优化的机器架构的所在地。20 世纪 80 年代初，他觉得，由于成立了一家公司将其 Lisp 机器商业化，实验室的道德规范（程序员可以自由分享他们的工作）受到了破坏（图 12.5）^。61

Stallman’s odyssey had begun at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, home of the Incompatible Timesharing System and work on machine architectures optimized for Lisp. In the early 1980s he felt that the ethic of the lab, in which programmers freely shared their work, was being undermined by the founding of a company to commercialize its Lisp machines (figure 12.5).⁶¹

斯托曼决心开发免费赠送的软件。1983 年 9 月，斯托曼在 Usenet 上发帖称：“从今年感恩节开始，我将写一本一个完整的 Unix 兼容软件系统，称为 GNU（Gnu's Not Unix），并免费提供给所有可以使用它的人。时间、金钱、程序和设备的贡献是极其必要的。”后来，在同一篇文章中，他阐述了他的自由软件哲学：“我认为黄金法则要求，如果我喜欢一个程序，我必须与喜欢它的其他人分享。我不能凭良心签署保密协议或软件许可协议。为了能够继续使用计算机而不违背我的原则，我决定整合足够多的自由软件，这样我就能够在没有任何非自由软件的情况下生活下去。” ⁶²

Stallman resolved to produce software to be freely given away. In a Usenet post in September 1983 Stallman wrote: “Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu’s Not Unix), and give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed.” Later in the same posting he stated his philosophy of free software: “I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement. So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.”⁶²

随着对实际 Unix 可用性的限制越来越多，人们对该项目的兴趣也随之增加。1984 年，贝尔系统被法院命令解散。AT&T 用其本地电话公司和垄断地位换取了在计算机业务中直接竞争的能力。其计划以从基于 Unix 的系统赚钱为中心。AT&T 要求支付巨额许可费，并习惯起诉涉嫌使用其代码的供应商，这减缓并分散了 Unix 的采用。

Interest in the project was boosted by increasing restrictions on the availability of actual Unix. In 1984, the Bell System was broken up by court order. AT&T exchanged its local phone companies and its monopoly for the ability to compete directly in the computer business. Its plans centered on making money from Unix-based systems. AT&T’s demands for hefty license payments and habit of suing vendors suspected of using its code slowed and fragmented the adoption of Unix.

Stallman 发现 Unix 系统的一些组件已经是免费的，例如用于在终端上显示图形的 X Window 系统和 Donald Knuth 的 TeX 排版程序等。除此之外，Stallman 还添加了自己广泛使用的 Emacs文本编辑器，他为 Unix 重写了它。63^在几位同事的帮助下，他开始为 Unix 工具制作一个又一个的替代品，建立了一个免费软件体系，这些软件可以与商业或学术界需要大量人员才能创建的软件相媲美，甚至更好。他自己在麻省理工学院慷慨借给他的办公室里完成了大部分工作。有一段时间，这也是他的宿舍。斯托曼出色的 Gnu C 编译器取代了标准的 Unix 版本，为 C 编程语言建立了事实上的标准。

Stallman found that some components of a Unix system were already free—the X Window system for displaying graphics on a terminal and Donald Knuth’s TeX typesetting program, among others. To those, Stallman added his own widely used Emacs text editor, which he rewrote for Unix.⁶³ With the help of a few colleagues, he began producing substitutes for one after another of the Unix tools, building up a body of free software that was comparable to, or even better than, what it took large teams of people to create in the commercial or academic world. He did much of this himself, in an office generously loaned to him by MIT. For a while that was also his sleeping quarters. Stallman’s excellent Gnu C Compiler replaced the standard Unix version to establish a de facto standard for the C programming language.

同样重要的是 Stallman 为分发此作品而制定的法律协议。在律师的帮助下，他制定了 GNU 通用公共许可证 (GPL)。用他的话说，“这是一份法律文书，要求那些传播程序的人拥有使用、修改和重新分发代码的权利；代码和自由在法律上不可分割。” ⁶⁴该许可证不仅规定 GNU 软件可以自由使用和修改，还要求改进软件的人在相同条款下提供他们的修改。正是这最后一项规定如此激进。免费提供程序和源代码并不是什么新鲜事。在 20 世纪 50 年代，SHARE 等组织和 IBM 等公司一直都在这样做，如第 2 章所述。对于 GNU 爱好者来说，免费提供软件是一种意识形态承诺，而不仅仅是一种务实的分发选择。Stallman 坚持认为，自由软件中的免费并不意味着免费提供，就像“免费啤酒”一样。该软件是“自由的”，因为它的用户有权研究、修改和重新利用代码。

Just as important was the legal agreement Stallman crafted to distribute this work under. With the help of an attorney he developed a GNU General Public License (GPL). In his words, “It is a legal instrument that requires those who pass on a program to include the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code; the code and the freedoms become legally inseparable.”⁶⁴ The license not only stipulated that GNU software was free to use and modify, but also required that those who improve it make their modifications available under the same terms. It is this last provision that was so radical. Giving away programs and source code was nothing new. In the 1950s, groups like SHARE and companies like IBM did that all the time, as discussed in chapter 2. For the GNU enthusiasts, giving away software was an ideological commitment, not just a pragmatic distribution choice. Stallman insists that the free in free software did not simply mean provided without payment, like “free beer.” The software is “free as in freedom” because its users are empowered to study, modify, and repurpose the code.

Linux 几乎就是 Unix

Linux Is Almost Unix

Stallman 在开发操作系统内核时遇到了困难，而操作系统内核是将 GNU 变成 Unix 的完全替代品所需的最重要组件。最终，这个内核来自一个意想不到的来源。1991 年，当时 22 岁的 Linus Torvalds（分期付款）购买了一台功能强大的 386 处理器 PC。他曾在赫尔辛基大学学习过 Unix 课程，因此对 Unix 非常熟悉。他能以不花太多钱买到的最接近的操作系统是 Minix，由阿姆斯特丹自由大学的 Andrew Tanenbaum 开发，是一种简化的类 Unix 教学系统。65几乎就在他开始运行^Minix后，Torvalds 发现 Minix 无法满足他的需求。具体来说，他需要一个终端仿真程序，以便访问大学的软件资源和在线讨论组。⁶⁶ 1991 年 8 月，他在 Usenet 讨论组发帖称：“我正在为 386 (486) AT 克隆机开发一个（免费）操作系统（只是业余爱好，不会像 gnu 那样大而专业）。……我希望得到大家对 minix 的喜好和厌恶的反馈，因为我的操作系统与 minix 有些相似。” ⁶⁷下个月，他在网上发布了自己的作品。在托管他的文件的 Ari Lemmke 的建议下，该程序被称为 Linux。随着工作的进展，Torvalds 开始将 Linux 视为 Unix 本身的替代品，而不仅仅是 Minix 的衍生品。这导致了一次突破Tanenbaum 在 1992 年初于 comp.os.minix 新闻组发表帖子，表达了他对 Torvalds 做法的不满。在与 Tanenbaum 激烈争论之后，Linux 讨论转移到了其自己的新闻组。

Stallman ran into difficulties in developing an operating system kernel, the most vital component needed to turn GNU into a full replacement for Unix. It came eventually from an unexpected source. In 1991, Linus Torvalds, then 22 years old, bought (on an installment plan) a powerful 386-based PC. He was familiar with Unix from a course he had taken at the University of Helsinki. The closest thing he could obtain without spending a lot of money was Minix, developed by Andrew Tanenbaum of Vrije University in Amsterdam, as a simplified Unix-like system for instructional use.⁶⁵ Almost as soon as he had it running, Torvalds found that Minix fell short of his needs. Specifically, he needed a terminal-emulation program that allowed him to access the University’s software resources and online discussion groups.⁶⁶ In a post to a Usenet discussion group in August 1991, he explained “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones.… I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat.”⁶⁷ The next month he posted his work online. At the suggestion of Ari Lemmke, who hosted his files, the program was called Linux. As work progressed, Torvalds began to think of Linux as an alternative to Unix itself, not just a derivative of Minix. That led to a break with Tanenbaum, who registered his disapproval of Torvalds’s approach in a posting to the comp.os.minix newsgroup in early 1992. After a heated exchange with Tanenbaum, Linux discussion moved to its own newsgroup.

Linux 在全球自愿爱好者群体的推动下迅速成长。托瓦兹利用互联网以低廉的价格分发其作品，并几乎立即收到用户的反馈。托瓦兹逐渐将项目的部分工作移交给他信任的群体。Linux 的成功依赖于 GNU 团队已经开发的所有开源工具。（几十年来，斯托曼一直在提醒人们，操作系统应该真正称为 GNU/Linux，而不仅仅是 Linux。）由于 Linux 是免费的，因此创建了许多不同的版本，这些版本被称为伯克利标准 Unix 发行版的发行版。

Linux grew quickly on the shoulders of a worldwide, voluntary group of enthusiasts. Torvalds exploited the Internet’s ability to distribute his work cheaply and receive almost instant feedback from users. Torvalds gradually turned over portions of the project to those among that group whom he trusted. The success of Linux rested on all the open source tools already produced by the GNU team. (Stallman has for some decades now been reminding people that the operating system should really be called GNU/Linux rather than just Linux.) Because Linux was free, many different versions, known as distributions in the tradition of the Berkeley Standard Distribution of Unix, were created.

Eric Raymond 是那些看到这种软件开发模式优点的程序员之一。在一篇名为《大教堂与集市》的颇具影响力的文章中，他指出，通过让人们查看和修改源代码，可以比在封闭系统中更快地发现和修复错误。正如 Raymond 所说（转述 Torvalds 的话），“只要有足够的眼光，所有错误都是浅显的。” ⁶⁸ Raymond 将这种方法称为开源开发，强调其实用的好处，而不是 Stallman 为让世界摆脱软件所有权而进行的意识形态斗争。尽管正如人类学家 Chris Kelty 所指出的那样，双方所青睐的做法和许可证几乎完全相同，但这种区别引起了激烈的争论^。69

Eric Raymond was among those programmers who saw the merits of this model of software development. In an influential essay titled “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” he argued that by letting people look at and modify the source code, bugs are found and fixed faster than they possibly could be in a closed system. As Raymond said (paraphrasing Torvalds), “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”⁶⁸ Raymond called the approach open source development, stressing its pragmatic benefits rather than Stallman’s ideological struggle to free the world from software ownership. The distinction was passionately debated, even though, as anthropologist Chris Kelty has noted, the practices and licenses favored by the two sides were almost identical.⁶⁹

自由软件运动的早期志愿者很快得到了计算机软件和硬件公司带薪员工的加入。这种转变最引人注目的信号是 IBM 将 Linux 作为其专有大型机操作系统的替代品。该项目始于 IBM 位于博布林根的德国实验室的一项“臭鼬工厂”项目，1999 年底，一群年轻的程序员成功地将 Linux 移植到 IBM 390 大型机上。IBM 宣布：“Linux 已经到来，Linux 已经准备就绪。为商业、电子商务和企业做好准备。”一则广告展示了一只模糊的黑白企鹅（Linux 吉祥物）在大型机安装的塔楼中行走。

The early volunteers of the free software movement were soon joined by paid employees of computer software and hardware companies. The most dramatic signal of this shift came when IBM embraced Linux as an alternative to its proprietary mainframe operating systems. That began as a “skunk works” project at IBM’s German lab in Boeblingen, where in late 1999 a team of young programmers succeeded in porting Linux to an IBM 390 mainframe. IBM announced, “Linux is here and Linux is ready. Ready for business, Ready for e-business. Ready for enterprise.” One ad showed a fuzzy black-and-white image of a penguin, the Linux mascot, walking through the towers of a mainframe installation.

尽管发行 Linux 的公司不得收取超过一小笔费用来弥补成本，但他们希望通过销售支持和服务合同赚更多的钱。最知名的 Linux 公司 Red Hat 于 1999 年上市。其股票在交易的第一天上涨了三倍，收盘价达到 30 亿美元的水平。Unix 公司多年来一直在努力协调他们的系统，以便为一个版本编写的程序可以在其他版本上运行，提供一个统一的平台来挑战微软。这从未发生过，但 Linux 承诺提供标准化的核心操作系统。免费是另一个好处。以图形软件而闻名的 Corel 认为 Linux将其视为挑战 Windows 作为标准桌面操作系统的机会。Unix 的安装、配置和使用要困难得多，但 Linux 可以根据需要进行修改。Corel 投资了数百万美元，使 Linux 更易于使用和安装，并于 1999 年发布了其第一个公开版本。成立于 2001 年的 Lindows 也有类似的目标，承诺推出一个可以轻松运行为 Windows 编写的程序的 Linux 版本。

Although companies distributing Linux were not allowed to charge more than a small fee to cover their costs, they could hope to make much more money selling support and service contracts. The most visible of the Linux companies, Red Hat, went public in 1999. Its stock tripled in price on their first day of trading, closing at a level that valued the fledgling company at three billion dollars. Unix companies had been trying for years to harmonize their systems so that programs written for one version would work on others, providing a unified platform to challenge Microsoft. That never happened, but Linux promised to provide a standardized core operating system. Costing nothing was another bonus. Corel, best known for its graphics software, saw Linux as a chance to challenge Windows as the standard desktop operating system. Unix was much harder to install, configure, and use, but Linux could be modified as needed. Corel invested millions of dollars to make Linux easier to use and install, releasing its first public version in 1999. Lindows, founded in 2001, had a similar goal, promising a version of Linux that made it easy to run programs written for Windows.

作为对台式电脑 Windows 的挑战，Linux 失败了，尽管这种威胁确实迫使微软更积极地为 Windows 定价。选择 Linux 并没有为消费者节省多少钱，特别是因为微软强迫 PC 制造商为每台售出的电脑授权 Windows，无论客户是否愿意。普通用户想要使用的大多数程序都适用于 Windows，但不适用于 Linux。Linux 仍然令人望而生畏。例如，用户在文件管理系统和桌面环境等方面有很多选择，这使得软件公司无法生产出可以在所有版本的 Linux 上轻松运行的应用程序。只有软件开发人员和开源爱好者可能会在他们的个人电脑上运行 Linux，在 21 世纪初期，他们可能只占市场的 1% 或 2%。这比 Unix 十年前的市场份额还要低，当时昂贵的工作站用于技术计算和财务建模。

As a challenge to Windows on desktop computers, Linux flopped, although the threat did force Microsoft to price Windows more aggressively. Choosing Linux did not save a consumer much money, particularly because Microsoft forced PC makers to license Windows for every computer sold, whether customers wanted it or not. Most of the programs that ordinary users wanted to use were available for Windows but not for Linux. Linux remained daunting. For example, users had many choices for things like file management systems and desktop environments, which prevented software companies from producing applications that would work easily on all versions of Linux. Only software developers and open source enthusiasts were likely to run Linux on their personal computers, accounting for maybe one or two percent of the market in the early 2000s. That was less market share than Unix had had a decade earlier, back when expensive workstations were used for technical computing and financial modeling.

LAMP 开源堆栈

The LAMP Open Source Stack

对于服务器来说，情况则大不相同。1994 年，随着 Web 的兴起，Windows NT 开始积聚力量，向 Novell 服务器（用于办公用途）和 Unix 服务器（用于更苛刻的工作）发起挑战。尽管 Windows NT 能够出色地通过廉价的标准 PC 硬件提供网页，但它从未像在桌面操作系统中那样在服务器市场上占据主导地位。大多数早期网站都在 Unix 服务器或 BSD 上运行，后者已从 Unix 升级包发展为没有 AT&T 代码的独立替代方案。Unix 系统价格昂贵，这推高了运营互联网网站的成本。Web 公司没有转向使用 Windows 和 PC 硬件来降低成本，而是通过依赖免费的 Linux 操作系统节省了更多成本。

For servers, the situation was quite different. In 1994, as the Web took off, Windows NT was beginning to build up momentum as a challenge to Novell servers for office use and to Unix servers for more demanding jobs. Although Windows NT could do a creditable job serving Web pages from cheap, standard PC hardware, it never dominated the market for servers the same way it did for desktop operating systems. Most early websites ran on Unix servers or on BSD, which had evolved from a package of Unix upgrades to a free-standing alternative with no AT&T code. Unix systems were expensive, which drove up the cost of operating Internet sites. Instead of shifting to Windows and PC hardware to reduce costs, Web companies saved even more by relying on the free Linux operating system.

到 21 世纪初，Web 应用服务器的其他关键软件组件也越来越有可能成为免费软件。第一个占据主导地位的是 Apache，自 1996 年以来，它一直是使用最广泛的 Web 服务器。这个名字是一个文字游戏：它最初是一组软件补丁，用于扩展 NCSA Web 服务器，而 NCSA Web 服务器本身基于 CERN 的代码。很快，Apache 就成为了一个强大且可扩展的软件。这在 Web 服务器完全发展之前就扼杀了商业市场^。70

By the early 2000s the other key software components of a Web application server were also increasingly likely to be free software. The first to gain dominance was Apache, which has been the most widely used Web server since 1996. The name was a play on words: it began as a collection of software patches to extend the NCSA Web server, itself based on code from CERN. Soon Apache became a robust and extensible piece of software in its own right. This killed the commercial market for Web servers before it had fully developed.⁷⁰

Web 应用服务器需要数据库管理系统来存储用户、产品和订单信息。Oracle 在商业 Web 的早期很受欢迎，但就像它运行的专有 Unix 服务器一样，它是一个昂贵的选择。MySQL 于 1995 年推出，是一个免费的替代方案。它由瑞典的一家公司生产该公司免费提供基本产品，并出售针对大型公司的扩展版本。第一个版本仅适用于简单的应用程序，因此它与通常独立于公司主数据库开发的 Web 系统自然搭配。在接下来的十五年里，它逐渐在功能上缩小了与 Oracle 的差距，增加了触发器和存储过程等功能。自 2010 年起，MySQL 一直归 Oracle 所有，因为 Oracle 收购了 Sun，而 Sun 之前也收购了 MySQL。这表明免费软件在多大程度上加强了 Oracle 和 IBM 等强大的科技公司，而不是消灭了它们。

Web application servers need a database management system to store information on users, products, and orders. Oracle was popular in the early days of the commercial Web, but like the proprietary Unix servers on which it ran, it was an expensive choice. MySQL, launched in 1995, was a free alternative. It was produced by a Swedish company that gave away the basic product and sold a version with extensions intended for larger companies. The first versions were suitable for simple applications only, making it a natural pairing with Web systems that often had been developed separately from a company’s main databases. Over the next fifteen years, it gradually closed the edge with Oracle in features, adding capabilities such as triggers and stored procedures. Since 2010, MySQL has been owned by Oracle following that firm’s purchase of Sun, which had previously acquired MySQL. This illustrates the extent to which free software has strengthened, rather than eliminated, powerful technology firms like Oracle and IBM.

大多数 Web 应用程序都在名为 LAMP 的软件堆栈上运行，LAMP 代表 Linux、Apache、MySQL 和 PHP，PHP 系统逐渐取代 Perl 成为编写 Web 应用程序的默认选择。PHP 是专为 Web 创建的最流行的编程语言。PHP 等 Web 应用程序服务器处理网页中与常规 HTML 内容交织在一起的代码片段。然后，服务器在将页面发送到 Web 浏览器之前填写运行此代码的结果。

Most Web applications run on the stack of software called LAMP, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, a system that gradually replaced Perl as the default choice for coding Web applications. PHP is the most popular programming language created specifically for the Web. Web application servers such as PHP processed code fragments interleaved with regular HTML content within Web pages. Then the server filled in the results of running this code before it sent the pages to the Web browser.

应用服务器集成了对在数据库管理系统上运行的 SQL 语句的支持，从而提供了一种从数据库中提取信息并在网页中格式化信息的简便方法。这是大多数 Web 应用程序的关键要求。应用服务器还克服了 Web 服务器将每个页面请求作为独立事件接收的方式所带来的挑战。对于提供简单、不变的页面，这不会造成任何问题，但要执行诸如跟踪添加到在线购物车中的产品之类的操作，网站必须跟踪其客户从一个页面到另一个页面。Web 应用程序程序员必须为每个用户会话存储单独的变量集，并跟踪针对发出请求的用户的页面请求。Web 应用程序服务器自动完成这两项工作，简化了程序员的工作。

Application servers integrated support for SQL statements to be run on database management systems, giving an easy way to pull information from databases and format it within Web pages. That was a crucial requirement for most Web applications. Application servers also overcame challenges produced by the way in which Web servers receive each request for a page as an isolated event. For serving simple, unchanging pages that posed no problem, but to do something like tracking the products had added to an online shopping cart, a website had to track its customers from one page to another. Web application coders had to store separate sets of variables for each user session and track page requests against the users making them. Web application servers did both things automatically, simplifying the job of coders.

公司发现，授权使用商业应用服务器软件（例如 ColdFusion，每台大型服务器的费用为 5,000 美元）可以快速收回成本，因为应用程序开发速度更快，错误更少。与 MySQL 一样，PHP 最初也是一种粗糙但免费的替代品。2001 年，《个人电脑杂志》对 PHP 的评分仅为 2 分（满分 5 分），落后于微软、Borland 和 IBM 等公司的商业替代品。71^尽管被认为“对于高流量业务环境来说太不成熟”，但 PHP 在小型、低预算工作中仍然很受欢迎——这从它的名字中就可以看出来，它最初代表个人主页。代码库似乎通过添加缺失的功能来扩展其功能。PHP 正在成为一个可靠的竞争对手，尽管由于其渐进式开发路径，其核心语言和库仍然令人沮丧地不一致。到 2010 年代，PHP 已成为大多数 Web 安装的标准组成部分，为大量流行网站和应用程序提供支持。例如，流行的 Web 发布系统 WordPress、Joomla 和 Drupal 都是用 PHP 编写的。总的来说，它们为全球超过三分之一的网站提供支持。

Companies found that licensing a commercial application server software such as ColdFusion, which could cost $5,000 for each large server, would quickly pay for itself with quicker application development and fewer bugs. Like MySQL, PHP began as a crude but free alternative. In 2001 PC Magazine rated PHP just 2 out of 5, behind commercial alternatives from companies like Microsoft, Borland, and IBM.⁷¹ Despite being deemed “too immature for a high traffic business environment,” PHP was nevertheless popular for small, low budget jobs—as reflected in its name, which originally stood for personal home page. Code libraries appeared to extend its capabilities by adding missing features. PHP was becoming a credible competitor, even though its core language and libraries remained frustratingly inconsistent because of its incremental development path. By the 2010s, PHP was a standard part of most Web installations, underpinning a huge number of popular websites and applications. For example, the popular Web publishing systems WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are all written in PHP. Considered together, they power more than a third of the world’s websites.

这里更重要的一点是，微软从未能够将 Web 变成一个专有系统，因为它无法将其在 Web 浏览器方面的主导地位与对生成网页的服务器的控制权相匹配。如果微软的互联网信息服务器也占据了 90% 以上的市场份额，那么微软就可以逐渐将 Web 从基于开放标准的系统转变为一个全微软软件堆栈就足够的系统。由于大多数网站都使用免费软件，即使 Internet Explorer 取得了成功，微软也没有权力单方面为自己的利益制定 Web 标准。

The bigger point here is that Microsoft was never able to turn the Web into a proprietary system because it couldn’t match its domination of the browser side of the Web with similar control over the servers that generated Web pages. If Microsoft’s Internet information server had also held a market share of over 90 percent, then Microsoft could have gradually shifted the Web from a system based on open standards to a system in which an all-Microsoft stack of software would suffice. As most websites used free software, even the success of Internet Explorer did not give Microsoft the power to unilaterally set Web standards for its own benefit.

Firefox 浏览器

The Firefox Browser

网络的持续开放性使得 Internet Explorer 面临新的挑战。这也降低了微软积极捍卫其地位的战略利益。例如，2003 年，该公司停止了 Macintosh 版 Internet Explorer 的开发，而此前它曾向苹果公司付费让其成为默认浏览器。

The Web’s continuing openness made new challenges to Internet Explorer possible. It also reduced Microsoft’s strategic interest in fighting vigorously to defend its position. For example, in 2003 the firm discontinued Internet Explorer for Macintosh, which it had previously paid Apple to make the default browser.

1998 年，随着 Netscape 的浏览器业务分崩离析，其公司战略转向网络门户市场，其管理层将开源开发作为利用其有限资源对抗微软的一种方式，发布了其浏览器套件的完整源代码，希望这能产生大量改进的变体。由此产生的 Mozilla 浏览器使用起来很笨拙，并带有大量无关的功能，只赢得了最忠实的开源支持者的支持。

In 1998, as Netscape’s browser business unraveled and its corporate strategy shifted toward the Web-portal market, its management had gambled open source development as a way to leverage its limited resources against Microsoft, releasing the full source code for its browser suite in the hope that this might produce a flood of improved variants. The resulting Mozilla browsers were clumsy to use and burdened with a mass of extraneous features, winning support only from the most dedicated open source supporters.

随后，在 2004 年，《华尔街日报》和《纽约时报》等全国性刊物突然注意到了一款新浏览器 Firefox。72 ^1.0版于 11 月发布，在此之前，该程序已经赢得了大量忠实的追随者。2002 年，一位 Netscape 程序员和一位实习生决定创建一个新版本的 Mozilla，精简其基本功能。73^该项目迅速发展，招募了经验丰富的开发人员，并最终成为 Mozilla 项目的旗舰产品。它的出现恰逢一系列利用 Internet Explorer 与 Windows 紧密集成的安全攻击，这给了用户一个令人信服的理由来转移。Firefox 拥有 Explorer 所缺少的其他简单但有用的功能，特别是在单个窗口中以选项卡形式打开多个页面并在它们之间快速切换的功能。它的功能很快通过数十个附加程序得到扩展，定制 Firefox 以执行诸如阻止互联网广告之类的操作。

Then, seemingly suddenly in 2004, national publications such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times took notice of a new browser, Firefox.⁷² Version 1.0 was released in November, after the program had already won a large and loyal following. In 2002, a Netscape programmer and a teenager working as an intern had resolved to create a new version of Mozilla, pared down to its essentials.⁷³ The project gained steam rapidly, recruiting experienced developers, and eventually became the flagship product of the Mozilla project. Its appearance coincided with a rash of security attacks exploiting Internet Explorer’s tight integration with Windows, giving users a convincing reason to shift. Firefox boasted other simple but useful features missing from Explorer, particularly the ability to open several pages as tabs within a single window and shift rapidly between them. Its capabilities were quickly extended by dozens of add-on programs, customizing Firefox to do things like block Internet advertisements.

在正式发布后的一年内，Firefox 占据了全球浏览器市场的十分之一以上。在 2009-10 年的巅峰时期，Firefox 占据了近三分之一的市场份额。这些增长削弱了微软的地位，微软的份额已经下降到所有浏览器用户的一半左右。Firefox 是第一个被 Windows 和 Macintosh 用户广泛使用的开源桌面计算机应用程序。它的胜利标志着计算领域的转变。微软对桌面操作系统和办公应用程序的控制仍然稳固，但该公司主宰和封闭互联网的尝试显然正在崩溃。

Within a year of its official release, Firefox had more than one-tenth of the worldwide browser market. At its peak in 2009–10, Firefox had almost a third of the market. These gains eroded the position of Microsoft, whose share had already fallen to about half of all browser users. Firefox was the first open source desktop computer application widely used by Windows and Macintosh users. Its triumph signaled a shift in the computing landscape. Microsoft’s hold on desktop operating systems and office applications remained secure, but the firm’s attempts to dominate and enclose the Internet were visibly crumbling.

安腾 — 未曾实现的未来

Itanium—The Future That Wasn’t

基于 PC 的服务器可以提供与传统大型机相媲美的性能和可靠性，但与大型机一样，这需要昂贵的组件。大多数服务器使用英特尔奔腾芯片的特殊 Xeon 品牌版本。2001 年，在联合开发项目耗资数十亿美元，进度落后多年，英特尔和惠普开始销售基于全新架构的芯片。安腾预计将首先取代高端服务器中的现有处理器，然后进入工作站，最后进入普通 PC。其 64 位架构支持大量内存，可以更有效地运行复杂计算。

PC-based servers could provide performance and reliability to rival traditional mainframes, but as with mainframes, this required expensive components. Most servers used special Xeon branded versions of Intel’s Pentium chips. In 2001, after a joint development project that consumed billions of dollars and ran years behind schedule, Intel and Hewlett-Packard began to sell chips based on an entirely new architecture. Itanium was expected to first replace existing processors in higher-end servers, before reaching workstations, and finally ordinary PCs. Its 64-bit architecture supported very large amounts of memory and ran complex computations more effectively.

Itanium 从未流行起来。部分原因是技术薄弱。Itanium 芯片与英特尔现有处理器相比的优势远不及预期。只有惠普自己在价值数十万美元的服务器上广泛使用了该芯片。但更根本的是，Itanium 瞄准的高性能服务器市场变得不那么重要了。互联网公司通过使用大量连接在一起的普通计算机主板来获得所需的惊人存储和处理器能力，而不是花费巨资购买少量带有特殊存储和内存系统的专用处理器。

Itanium never caught on. Part of that was weak technology. Itanium chips had much less advantage than expected over Intel’s existing processors. Only Hewlett-Packard itself used the chip extensively, in servers costing several hundred thousand dollars. More fundamentally, however, the high-performance server market that Itanium targeted was becoming less important. Internet companies obtained the daunting quantities of storage and processor power they needed by using massive numbers of ordinary computer boards joined together rather than spending huge amounts of money for smaller numbers of specialized processors with exotic storage and memory systems.

谷歌的数据中心

Google’s Data Centers

这种新方法由谷歌首创。谷歌在两个领域提供的结果远超竞争对手，从而成为全球最有价值的公司之一：网络搜索和网络广告。谷歌的成功通常归功于其卓越的算法，尤其是其创始人在研究生时期创建的 PageRank 算法。但这只反映了部分情况。谷歌的算法为用户提供了更好的搜索结果，其广告系统通过选择用户可能点击的相关广告赚取了更多利润。但运行这些巧妙的算法比竞争对手的简单方法消耗更多的处理器周期和内存。

The new approach was pioneered by Google. It became one of the world’s most valuable companies by providing much better results than its competitors in two areas: Web search and Web advertising. Its success is usually attributed to superior algorithms, particularly the PageRank algorithm its founders created as graduate students. That gives only a part of the picture. Google’s algorithms provided better search results to its users, and its advertising system made more money by selecting relevant ads that users might click. But running those clever algorithms consumed more processor cycles and RAM than the simpler approaches of its competitors.

谷歌搜索引擎在早期还是斯坦福大学的一个项目，当时使用的是一台昂贵的双处理器 Sun 服务器。谷歌的商业模式依赖于提供消耗大量计算机资源的服务。为了有机会盈利，该公司需要大幅降低计算成本。正如史蒂芬·利维 (Steven Levy) 在其著作《In the Plex》中所描述的那样，谷歌搬离校园后开始构建自己的服务器。1999 年，谷歌聘请了 Urs Hölzle ，后者负责购买两千块廉价 PC 主板。谷歌员工将这些主板组装成廉价服务器（见图13.1）。随着谷歌的发展，它使用了数十万台、最终是数百万台这样的计算机一起运行，从而节省了显卡和机箱的成本。2004 年，谷歌推出了 Gmail 服务，提供整整 1GB 的免费存储空间，比雅虎市场领先的电子邮件服务多出 250 倍，规模上的差异对局外人来说显而易见。

In its earliest days, as a Stanford project, Google’s search engine used an expensive dual processor Sun server. Google’s business model hinged on giving access to services that consumed spectacularly large amounts of computer power. To have a chance of ever becoming profitable, the firm needed to dramatically lower the cost of computation. As Steven Levy described in his book In the Plex, when Google moved off campus it began to build its own servers. In 1999, it hired Urs Hölzle, who arranged for the purchase of two thousand cheap PC motherboards. Google staffers assembled these into cut-price servers (see figure 13.1). As Google grew it used hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of these computers running together, saving the cost of a graphics card and a case. The difference of scale became clear to outsiders in 2004 when Google launched its Gmail service with a full gigabyte of free storage, two hundred fifty times more than Yahoo’s market-leading email service provided.

传统服务器价格昂贵，因为它们使用了更可靠、性能更高的组件。谷歌通过额外的软件层实现了可靠性和性能。主板和磁盘驱动器经常出现故障，但用户从未谷歌文件系统这一软件通过冗余保存数据，提供了可靠的存储。谷歌开发的核心功能是 MapReduce，它允许程序员以一种便于在多个处理器上分配任务的方式指定大型任务。它会自动将工作分成小块并重新组合结果。如果某个处理器突然出现故障，它那部分工作将由另一个单元重复。谷歌在开发其他服务时，也对这些服务进行了编码以利用 MapReduce。其目的是“将数据中心本身视为一台巨大的仓库级计算机”。2^随着谷歌发展到足以建造自己的数据中心的规模，其架构师也同样富有创造力。例如，谷歌通过让数据中心变得更热，并使用水而不是空调来带走热量，从而大幅降低了冷却成本。（许多公司还尝试将数据中心设备装入标准集装箱中，以便数据中心可以轻松搬迁或扩建。）

Conventional servers were expensive because they used more reliable, higher performance components. Google achieved reliability and performance with an extra layer of software. Motherboards and disk drives failed all the time, but users never even noticed. A piece of software, the Google file system, provided reliable storage by keeping data redundantly. The core capability Google developed, the cryptically named MapReduce, let programmers specify huge tasks in a way that facilitated spreading them across many processors. It automatically split the work into small pieces and reassembled the results. If a processor suddenly failed, its share of the job would be repeated by a different unit. As Google developed other services, these were also coded to take advantage of MapReduce. The aim was to “treat the data center itself as one massive warehouse-scale computer.”² As Google grew large enough to build its own data centers, its architects were similarly creative. For example, Google cut the cost of cooling substantially by letting data centers get hotter and using water rather than air conditioning to carry heat away. (Many companies also experimented with building data center equipment into standard shipping containers, so that data centers could easily be relocated or expanded.)

MapReduce 方法由当时在雅虎工作的软件设计师 Doug Cutting 和计算机科学研究生 Mike Cafarella 为一个新的开源项目 Apache Hadoop 所采用。2006 年，它的第一个版本立即被雅虎采用，当时雅虎试图在网络搜索领域领先于谷歌。到 2008 年初，雅虎运行着一个拥有一万多个处理器核心的 Hadoop 集群。Facebook、LinkedIn 和 eBay 迅速跟进，围绕 Hadoop 重建服务并为其代码贡献自己的改进。用户，甚至程序员，都不知道遍布全球的数千台计算机中究竟哪一台在存储他们的电子邮件或托管他们的文字处理器。

The MapReduce approach was taken up by software designer Doug Cutting, then working for Yahoo, and computer science graduate student Mike Cafarella for a new open source project, Apache Hadoop. Its first version, in 2006, was immediately applied by Yahoo, then trying to get ahead of Google in Web search. By early 2008, Yahoo was running a Hadoop cluster with more than ten thousand processor cores. Facebook, LinkedIn, and eBay quickly followed, rebuilding their services around Hadoop and contributing their own improvements to its code. Users, and even programmers, had no idea which of thousands of computers scattered across the world were storing their emails or hosting their word processor.

这种新方法提升了一个朗朗上口的术语的流行度：云计算（图 13.2）。这个比喻掩盖了数据中心的所有混乱、能源使用和人力劳动。相反，数据似乎在纯信息领域中轻盈地漂浮。3^微软、IBM 和亚马逊都开发了大规模云服务，以便公司可以签订合同来托管公司的电子邮件系统或自定义 Web 应用程序。公司花费巨资维护自己的服务器群，其中大部分不是用于硬件，而是用于 IT 人员、备份和灾难恢复功能等。云服务可以将这些成本分摊给许多用户，使计算更高效、更易于管理。领先的提供商亚马逊网络服务 (Amazon Web Services) 通过为宝马、大韩航空、三星、通用电气和联合利华等公司提供云基础设施，在 2019 年带来了超过 350 亿美元的收入。

The new approach boosted the popularity of a catchy term: cloud computing (figure 13.2). The metaphor hid all the messiness, energy use, and human labor involved in data centers. Instead data seemed to float weightless in a realm of pure information.³ Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon all developed large-scale cloud services so that companies could sign a contract to have their company’s email systems or custom Web applications hosted. Companies spent a huge amount maintaining their own server farms, most of it not for hardware but for IT staff, backup and disaster recovery capabilities, and so on. Cloud services could spread those costs over many users, making computing more efficient and manageable. Amazon Web Services, the leading provider, brought in more than $35 billion during 2019 by providing cloud infrastructure for firms like BMW, Korean Airlines, Samsung, GE, and Unilever.

从最初的 IBM PC 中使用的 8088 芯片发展而来的处理器架构已成为云计算集群、高性能服务器甚至大型机以及笔记本电脑和台式电脑的引擎。当英特尔的竞争对手 AMD 找到一种方法将其添加到兼容奔腾的芯片中而不影响其运行现有代码的能力时，安腾的标志性功能 64 位支持也与主流芯片相媲美。2004 年，英特尔将该系统复制到自己的处理器中，有效地为 64 位计算设定了行业标准。

The processor architecture that evolved from the humble 8088 chip used in the original IBM PC had become the engine for cloud computing clusters, high performance servers, and even mainframes, as well as laptop and desktop computers. Even Itanium’s signature feature, 64-bit support, was matched by mainstream chips when Intel’s rival, AMD, found a way to add it to Pentium-compatible chips without compromising their ability to run existing code. In 2004, Intel copied this system for its own processors, effectively setting the industry standard for 64-bit computing.

多核处理器

Multiple Core Processors

通过并行运行处理器来提高性能的理念适用于个人计算机和数据中心。从 20 世纪 70 年代到 21 世纪初，几乎所有个人计算机都只有一个处理器芯片。根据摩尔定律，这些芯片的性能在​​三大转变的推动下迅速而持续地提高。

The idea of boosting performance by running processors in parallel applied within individual computers as well as data centers. From the 1970s to the early 2000s, almost all personal computers had a single processor chip. Following Moore’s law, the power of these chips improved rapidly and consistently, driven by three main shifts.

首先，处理器每秒的运行周期更多。1984 年，IBM 最快的个人计算机 PC AT 的处理器运行速度为 6 MHz。20 年后，英特尔推出了 Pentium 4 版本，其运行周期比 PC AT 快 600 多倍。

First, processors were driven through more cycles each second. In 1984, IBM’s fastest personal computer, the PC AT, ran its processor at 6 MHz. Twenty years later, Intel offered a version of its Pentium 4 that cycled more than six hundred times as fast.

其次，处理器在每个周期内可以完成更多工作。例如，从 8 位架构转变为 64 位架构，通过让处理器处理更大的数据块。流水线技术可以更高效地使用处理器内的不同单元，让它们同时处理不同指令的各个部分。

Second, processors did more work in each cycle. For example, the shift from 8-bit to 64-bit architectures improved performance by letting the processor work on larger chunks of data. Pipelining used different units within the processor more efficiently by letting them work simultaneously on parts of different instructions.

最后，系统设计人员将处理器核心与系统其余部分分离开来。由于 RAM 芯片的访问时间一直落后于处理器速度，他们不得不依靠更大、更复杂的缓存系统来保持处理器高效运行。

Finally, system designers decoupled the core of the processor from the rest of the system. As RAM chip access times continued to lag behind processor speed, they relied on larger and more complex cache systems to keep the processor working productively.

这三项变革都是通过制造更小的晶体管和互连来实现的。更小的晶体管需要更少的功率，并且可以更快地驱动，而不会产生足以熔化芯片的热量。单个芯片上可以容纳更多晶体管，从而为逻辑提供空间来实现流水线等功能，并为高速缓存提供空间来提高性能。

All three of these changes were made possible by the ability to create smaller transistors and interconnections. Smaller transistors needed less power and could be driven faster without heating enough to melt the chip. More could be squeezed onto a single chip, providing room for logic to implement features such as pipelining and for cache memory to boost performance.

到 21 世纪初期，英特尔开始面临这种方法的局限性。在高时钟速度下，随着量子力学规则的出现，晶体管会通过绝缘材料泄漏电荷。处理器消耗的电量越来越多，因此需要更复杂的冷却系统。奔腾 4 比奔腾 3 更复杂，但由于为了实现非常高的时钟速率而做出的权衡，每个周期完成的工作更少。某些版本的奔腾 4 的指令流水线多达 31 个阶段。如果提前完成太多工作，每当出现意外分支而需要清空并重新填充流水线时，性能就会受到影响。

By the early 2000s, Intel was running up against the limitations of this approach. At high clock speeds, transistors were leaking charge through insulating materials, as the rules of quantum mechanics came into play. Processors were consuming more power, necessitating ever more elaborate cooling systems. The Pentium 4 was more complex than the Pentium 3 but got less done in each cycle because of trade-offs made to enable its very high clock rates. Some versions of the Pentium 4 had as many as thirty-one stages in their instruction pipelines. Working so far ahead hurt performance whenever an unexpected branch made it necessary to empty and refill the pipeline.

英特尔并没有像预期的那样过渡到 4 GHz 及更高频率，而是改变了策略。较新的处理器通过减少时钟周期来执行平均指令，而不是加快周期来提高性能。鉴于笔记本电脑越来越受欢迎，以及 ARM 超高效架构带来的威胁，能效现在与原始性能一样重要。2006 年，英特尔推出了 Core 品牌，将其较旧的赛扬和奔腾品牌降级为廉价芯片。Core 微架构提高了整体性能，同时降低了时钟速度。计算机营销开始不再强调时钟速度，而时钟速度曾是大多数 PC 广告的最大卖点。这一直具有误导性——就像根据引擎的最大转速而不是加速度来营销跑车一样。

Rather than make the anticipated transition to 4 GHz and beyond, Intel shifted its strategy. Newer processors improved performance by taking fewer clock cycles to execute the average instruction, rather than by cycling faster. Power efficiency was now as important as raw performance, given the growing popularity of laptops and the threat posed by ARM’s ultra-efficient architecture. In 2006 Intel introduced the Core brand, relegating its older Celeron and Pentium brands to budget-priced chips. The Core microarchitecture boosted overall performance while lowering clock speeds. Computer marketing began to de-emphasize clock speed, formerly the biggest selling point on most PC advertisements. That had always been misleading—like marketing a sports car according to the maximum RPM of its engine rather than the acceleration this accomplished.

最重要的性能特征是每个 Core Duo 芯片上都有两个完整的处理器核心，而 2008 年推出的 Core 2 Quad 型号则增加到四个核心。自 20 世纪 90 年代以来，英特尔芯片经常用于双处理器工作站。但是，两个高性能处理器的成本以及能够容纳它们的特殊主板意味着这种方法从未在普通计算机用户中流行起来。将两个或更多核心压缩到一个芯片上使其成为常态。

The most important performance feature was the presence of two complete processor cores on each Core Duo chip, increasing to four cores with the Core 2 Quad models launched in 2008. Since the 1990s, Intel chips had often been used in dual processor workstations. But the cost of two high-performance processors, and the special motherboards able to hold them, meant that this approach never took off for normal computer users. Squeezing two or more cores onto one chip made it the norm.

自 2010 年以来，英特尔的品牌标识并未向消费者透露其处理器有多少个内核或使用哪种微架构，而 Pentium MMX 和 Core 2 Quad 等标签之前却有透露。其产品编号完全是相对的：Core i3 处理器在性能和价格之间实现了良好的平衡，而 Core i5 处理器则提供了更高的性能更昂贵的计算机，而 Core i7 型号则面向旧的工作站市场：用户愿意为速度更快、有时更耗电的芯片支付高额费用（见图13.3）。新技术和新功能通常出现在高端，然后逐渐向下推广。i3、i5 或 i7 的主要名称后面跟着数字，让专家大致了解特定芯片的相对性能。该方案似乎借鉴了宝马的做法，宝马使用数字来确保不需要特殊知识就能了解邻居的车有多么出色。带有 540 徽章的汽车显然比停在街上的 320 更强大、更昂贵、功能更齐全。

Since 2010, Intel’s branding has not revealed to consumers how many cores their processor has or what microarchitecture it uses, as tags like Pentium MMX and Core 2 Quad had previously done. Its product numbering was purely relative: Core i3 processors offered a good balance of power versus price, Core i5 processors gave higher performance in more expensive computers, and Core i7 models were for the old workstation market: users willing to pay a significant premium for faster and sometimes more power-hungry chips (see figure 13.3). New technology and features usually appeared at the high end and trickled down. The main designation of i3, i5, or i7 was followed by digits that gave experts a general sense of the relative performance of a specific chip. The scheme seems to have been borrowed from BMW, which used numbers to make sure that no special knowledge was needed to understand how impressive a neighbor’s car was. A car with a 540 badge was clearly more powerful, expensive, and full of features than the 320 parked down the street.

同一品牌下销售的芯片的台式机版和移动版可能会有很大不同。例如，2018 年推出的第八代酷睿芯片涵盖了从只有两个内核的 i3-8130U 移动版到新款 i9-9980XE 台式机芯片（多达 18 个内核，标价 2,000 美元）的各个领域。后者的基本时钟速度仅为 3 GHz，比英特尔十年前的旗舰产品运行速度慢，但性能却大大提高。

Desktop and mobile versions of chips sold under the same brand could be quite different. The eighth generation Core chips introduced in 2018, for example, spanned the gamut from a mobile version of the i3–8130U, with just two cores, up to the new i9–9980XE desktop chips, with as many as 18 cores and a price tag of $2,000. The latter had only a 3 GHz base clock speed, cycling more slowly than Intel’s flagship had a decade earlier, but offered greatly improved performance.

英特尔芯片甚至进入了大型机市场。设计和制造用于大型机市场的定制处理器不再具有经济可行性。Unisys 开展了一个长期项目，将其从两个组成部分 Univac 和 Burroughs 继承的不同大型机操作系统迁移到一系列新的英特尔驱动的硬件上。这是一项模拟壮举，充分利用了英特尔的虚拟化功能来提供可靠的高性能计算。据该项目负责人称，“我们不希望客户重新编译他们的程序”，这意味着 1972 年编译的可执行程序必须在未经修改的情况下运行。现代芯片的原始功能足以克服模拟旧硬件造成的性能损失。2013 年，一位“每天处理总额达 2 万亿美元的交易的客户 [可能是 SWIFT 银行中心] 一夜之间无缝地从专有的 Libra 系统过渡到基于……英特尔至强技术的系统——没有人注意到。” ⁴

Intel’s chips even found their way into mainframes. Designing and building custom processors for the mainframe market was no longer economically viable. Unisys undertook a lengthy project of migrating the distinct mainframe operating systems it inherited from its two constituent parts, Univac and Burroughs, onto a new range of Intel-powered hardware. This was a feat of emulation, making extensive use of Intel’s virtualization features to provide reliable high-performance computing. According to the project’s leader, “we didn’t expect clients to ever recompile their program,” meaning that executable programs compiled back in 1972 had to run without modification. The raw power of modern chips was enough to overcome the performance penalty imposed by emulating the old hardware. In 2013, a customer “that processes transactions totaling $2 trillion each day [probably the SWIFT banking hub] transitioned seamlessly, overnight, from a proprietary Libra system to one based on … Intel Xeon technology—and nobody noticed.”⁴

一台在一块巨型芯片上配备 18 个处理器核心的台式计算机带来了令人印象深刻的并行处理程度。然而，与最新的图形硬件相比，这几乎算不上并行。截至 2019 年初，Nvidia 将其旗舰 Titan V 显卡的价格定为 3,000 美元，甚至可能让最专注的游戏玩家望而却步。然而，考虑到它拥有 5,750 个处理器核心，它也可以被视为一个非常实惠的替代品，可以替代塞满大型机的大楼。Nvidia 将 Titan 推向“深度学习”应用，声称其吞吐量足以让它在 15 年前成为世界上最强大的超级计算机。类似的芯片驱动着世界上最快的超级计算机，包括 Cray 于 2012 年为橡树岭国家实验室建造的 Titan 系统，以及它的继任者 Summit 计算机，由 IBM 于 2018 年推出。后者拥有 9,216 个 IBM Power 处理器和 27,648 个 Nvidia 芯片，每个都与 Titan V 卡上的芯片类似。

A desktop computer with eighteen processor cores on a single giant chip brings an impressive degree of parallel processing. Compared to the latest graphics hardware, though, that is barely parallel at all. As of early 2019, Nvidia lists its flagship Titan V graphics card for a price that might give pause to even the most dedicated gamer: $3,000. Yet given its 5,750 processor cores, it could also be viewed as an extremely affordable alternative to a large building stuffed with mainframes. Nvidia markets the Titan for “deep learning” applications, claiming a throughput that would have made it the world’s most powerful supercomputer just fifteen years earlier. Similar chips drive the world’s fastest supercomputers, including the Titan system that Cray built for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2012 and its successor, the Summit computer delivered by IBM in 2018. The latter holds 9,216 IBM Power processors and 27,648 Nvidia chips, each similar to the one on the Titan V card.

台式电脑拥有超级计算机性能的必然结果是，用户仍然能够使用较旧且性能较弱的硬件。在 20 世纪 90 年代，Windows 运行速度最慢，迫使用户尽可能每隔一两年升级到最新硬件。新版本的发布使旧硬件的速度减慢到无法使用的程度。有一句近乎圣经的说法：“英特尔给予的，微软拿走的。”英特尔可能做得太好了，以至于对自己不利。今天，即使是十年前的电脑也可以相当好地运行最新版本的 Office 和 Windows。个人电脑销量在 2011 年达到顶峰，由于不需要频繁更换，在接下来的六年里，每年销量都在下降。世界上仍然有很多个人电脑——大约 20 亿台，每年售出约 2.5 亿台。

The corollary to desktop computers with supercomputer performance is users who continue to do fine with older and less powerful hardware. In the 1990s, Windows ran slowly at best, pushing users to upgrade to the latest hardware every year or two if possible. New releases slowed older hardware to the point of unusability. There was a saying, in quasi-biblical language, “What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.” Intel may have done its job too well for its own good. Today even a decade-old computer can run the latest versions of Office and Windows reasonably well. PC sales peaked in 2011, and without the need for frequent replacement fell in each of the next six years. There are still a lot of PCs in the world—around two billion, with about 250 million sold each year.

虚拟化

Virtualization

21 世纪初期，界定计算机的构成变得越来越困难。正如我们在云计算讨论中所看到的，谷歌或 Facebook 等公司的程序员瞄准的平台是一个软件层，而不是单个服务器。他们的代码在数千台个人计算机组成的池中同时运行，以至于整个数据中心，甚至全球数据中心网络，都可以像一台巨型计算机一样进行编程。

Demarcating what constitutes a computer got increasingly hard during the early 2000s. As we saw in the discussion of cloud computing, the platform targeted by programmers at a company like Google or Facebook is a software layer, not an individual server. Their code is run simultaneously across a pool of thousands of individual computers, to the extent that an entire data center, or even a global network of data centers, can be programmed like a giant computer.

另一方面是虚拟化：在单个硬件上同时运行多个独立操作系统实例的能力。这两种趋势结合起来，让 IT 人员能够通过添加或删除分配给虚拟计算机的处理器数量和内存量来更改分配给虚拟计算机的硬件，而用户甚至程序员都不会意识到任何变化。

The other side of this is virtualization: the ability to run multiple separate operating system instances simultaneously on a single piece of hardware. In combination, these two trends let IT staffs change the hardware assigned to a virtual computer by adding or removing the number of processors and amount of memory assigned to it without users, or even programmers, being aware of any change.

虚拟化始于 20 世纪 70 年代的 IBM 大型机。我们已经讨论过虚拟内存对现代计算的重要性：为每个软件进程提供自己的私有内存空间，不受其他程序的干扰。当程序需要的存储空间超过内部可用空间时，内存块会根据需要分页到磁盘存储中。这有助于操作系统让用户和应用程序产生幻觉，让他们感觉自己在自己的私有虚拟计算机上运行。创造这种幻觉会给操作系统带来沉重的负担。

Virtualization began on IBM mainframes in the 1970s. We already talked about the importance of virtual memory to modern computing: giving each software process its own private memory space safe from interference from other programs. Chunks of memory were paged to disk storage as needed when programs needed more storage than was available internally. This helped the operating system to give users, and application programs, the illusion that they were running on their own private, virtual computers. Creating that illusion placed a heavy burden on the operating system.

下一步是创建非常强大、忠实于底层硬件的虚拟机，以便它们可以运行整个操作系统以及应用程序。这首先在 IBM 的控制程序/剑桥监控系统 (CP/CMS) 中尝试，该系统于 1968 年至 1972 年间在其剑桥科学中心开发，以应对 IBM 在为其 System 360/67 大型机开发 TSS 分时操作系统时遇到的困难。在单个处理器上支持数百个同时用户需要一个非常复杂的操作系统来处理任务和资源。一个小型Robert Creasy 领导的研究小组找到了一种不同的方法：为每个用户提供一个在虚拟处理器上运行的非常简单的操作系统 (CMS)。控制程序的工作是使用单个物理处理器模拟多个虚拟处理器。CP/CMS 可以比 TSS 承载更多用户，性能更佳。

The next step was to create virtual machines so robust, and so faithful to the underlying hardware, that they could run entire operating systems as well as application programs. This was first attempted in IBM’s control program/Cambridge monitor system (CP/CMS), developed at its Cambridge Scientific Center between 1968 and 1972 as a response to IBM’s difficulties in developing the TSS timesharing operating system for its System 360/67 mainframe. Supporting hundreds of simultaneous users on a single processor required a hugely complex operating system to juggle tasks and resources. A small research team led by Robert Creasy found a different approach: give each user a very simple operating system (CMS) running on a virtual processor. The control program’s job was simulating multiple virtual processors using a single physical processor. CP/CMS could host more users than TSS, with better performance.

IBM 抓住了虚拟机这一机遇，这成为其 System/370 系列的标志。其虚拟机 (VM) 操作系统以控制程序为中心，用于管理虚拟机并为其分配资源。每个虚拟机都可以运行常规的 OS/360 系列批处理操作系统、高性能交互式 CMS 或任何其他软件（包括 VM 的另一个副本）。这为 20 世纪 70 年代末的 IBM 大型机提供了无与伦比的灵活性。一屋子的小型计算机可以提供更多的处理能力，而大型机可以在需要时将其全部能力集中在一项庞大的工作上。操作员可能会在白天为运行交互式应用程序的虚拟机提供更多资源，并在夜班时将它们转移到批处理。一台大型机可以支持开发和生产系统，将它们完全隔离。随着时间的推移，虚拟机作为向旧应用程序和操作系统提供向后兼容性的一种手段变得很有价值。

IBM seized on virtual machines, which became the hallmark of its System/370 range. Its virtual machine (VM) operating system centered on a control program to manage the virtual machines and assigned resources to them. Each virtual machine could run a regular OS/360-family batch-oriented operating system, the high-performance interactive CMS, or any other piece of software (including another copy of VM). This gave IBM mainframes of the late 1970s an unrivaled flexibility. A room full of minicomputers offered a lot more processing power for the money, but the mainframe could focus its entire power on a single huge job when needed. Operators might give more resources to virtual machines running interactive applications during the day and shift them to batch processing during the night shift. One mainframe could support development and production systems, isolating them completely from each other. Over time, virtual machines became valuable as a means of providing backward compatibility for older applications and operating systems.

和许多其他架构特征一样，虚拟机最终从大型机通过小型计算机进入台式计算机。虚拟化和仿真之间的区别在于，仿真会严重影响性能，而虚拟化则使用处理器的本机指令集和硬件功能。VMWare 于 1999 年推出了支持英特尔芯片虚拟机的软件，使用巧妙的技术弥补了硬件支持的不足。英特尔和 AMD 于 2005 年开始添加硬件指令来支持虚拟化，改进了该技术，并在接下来的十年中将其推广到其全系列处理器。普通计算机用户可能在不知不觉中体验过虚拟化：最新版本的 Windows 依赖虚拟机来支持旧软件，而旧软件依赖于主操作系统中已消除的不安全功能。

Like many other architectural features, virtual machines eventually made their way from mainframes via minicomputers to desktop computers. The difference between virtualization and emulation is that emulation imposes a significant performance hit, whereas virtualization uses the native instruction set and hardware capabilities of the processor. Software to support virtual machines on Intel chips was launched in 1999 by VMWare, using ingenious techniques to compensate for the lack of hardware support. Intel and AMD began to add hardware instructions to support virtualization in 2005, improving the technology and rolling it out across their full range of processors over the next decade. Ordinary computer users may have experienced virtualization without realizing it: recent versions of Windows have relied on virtual machines to support older software that relied on insecure features eliminated from the main operating system.

虚拟化对服务器的影响最大。公司倾向于在不同的部门积累大量服务器，其中一些服务器运行专门功能的软件。较新的硬件可以支持每台服务器的大量工作负载，但将不相关的任务整合到同一台服务器上可能会带来安全风险，并导致进程之间不可预测的交互。相反，系统管理员将过时的服务器转换为虚拟机。随着工作负载的转移，这些虚拟机可以从一台物理服务器转移到另一台物理服务器，而用户甚至不会注意到。整个虚拟服务器可以作为单个文件备份，并且在发生灾难时可以轻松恢复。虚拟化使计算机实用程序的旧愿景更接近现实，因为组织可以享受无需构建和配备数据中心网络，即可配置自己的（虚拟）服务器。

Virtualization had its biggest impact on servers. Companies tended to accumulate large numbers of servers spread around different departments, some of them running software for specialized functions. Newer hardware could support enormous workloads on each server, but consolidating unrelated tasks onto the same server could introduce security risks and create unpredictable interactions between processes. Instead, system administrators converted obsolete servers to virtual machines. As workloads shifted, these virtual machines could be shuffled from one physical server to another without their users even noticing. The entire virtual server could be backed up as a single file and, in the event of a disaster, easily restored. Virtualization brought the old vision of a computer utility closer, as organizations could enjoy the flexibility that came with configuring their own (virtual) servers without needing to build and staff networks of data centers.

流媒体视频

Streaming Video

如今，用于传输和解压流媒体视频的处理器能力和网络带宽比用于其他任务的处理器能力和网络带宽都要多。我们已经讨论过从模拟电视到高清数字电视的转变，以及从模拟录像带到 DVD 和蓝光光盘的转变。这些电视和光盘播放器都是专用计算机。

More processor power and network bandwidth is now devoted to transmitting and decompressing streaming video than to any other task. We have already discussed the shift from analog television to high-definition digital television, and from analog video tapes to DVD and Blu-ray discs. Those televisions and disk players are special purpose computers.

在数字视频发展的早期，只有光盘或广播信号才能将足够的数据传输到这些计算机以产生高质量的图像。即使采用严格的压缩，通过拨号连接进行的视频流传输效果也很差，主要用于色情网站。这种情况在 21 世纪初开始发生变化，拨号调制解调器连接转变为更高速的 DSL 和电缆调制解调器，成为互联网接入的主要形式。这也需要对互联网主干网进行升级，采用更高效的光纤电缆光通信形式。

In the early days of digital video, only optical discs or broadcast signals could channel enough data to these computers to produce good-quality images. Even with aggressive compression, video streaming over dial-up connections delivered poor results and was used mostly by pornographic sites. That began to change in the early 2000s, with the shift from dial-up modem connections to higher speed DSL and cable modems as the main form of Internet access. It also took the upgrading of Internet backbones around ever more effective forms of optical communication over fiber optic cables.

但不太明显的是，向流媒体视频的过渡依赖于高效的云计算基础设施。大多数视频都是广告赞助或以低廉的月费提供。领先的免费视频网站是 YouTube，提供数百万普通人和公司上传的视频。它于 2005 年推出，发展迅速，仅 18 个月后，谷歌就同意以超过 16 亿美元的股票收购它。这在当时似乎是一大笔钱，但事实证明这是一项伟大的投资，因为随着 YouTube 视频质量和使用量的快速增长，谷歌拥有处理大量流量增长的基础设施。YouTube 成为观看音乐视频、与朋友分享家庭电影或流媒体直播活动的最常见方式。在谷歌开始与上传视频的 YouTube 用户分享广告收入后，一些明星凭借他们在玩视频游戏、录制喜剧小品或提供美容秘诀时聊天的技能成为了富有的名人。到 2013 年，YouTube 每月的独立访客超过 10 亿。它的许多亚文化发展出了自己的笑话和做法，例如分享重述标准视频序列或图像的模因视频。

Less obviously though, the transition to streaming video relied on efficient cloud computing infrastructure. Most video is advertising-supported or offered for a low monthly subscription. The leading free video site, offering millions of videos uploaded by ordinary people and by companies, is YouTube. It was launched in 2005 and grew so rapidly that just eighteen months later Google agreed to acquire it for stock worth more than $1.6 billion. That seemed like a lot of money at the time, but it turned out to be a great investment as Google had the infrastructure to handle massive growth in traffic as YouTube’s video quality and usage grew rapidly. YouTube became the most common way of viewing music videos, sharing home movies with friends, or streaming live events. After Google started sharing advertising revenues with the YouTubers who upload videos, some of its stars became wealthy celebrities thanks to their skills at chatting while playing video games, recording comedy sketches, or offering beauty tips. By 2013, YouTube was receiving more than a billion unique visitors each month. Its many subcultures developed their own jokes and practices, such as sharing meme videos recaptioning standard video sequences or images.

最受欢迎的订阅服务是 Netflix，它最初是一家邮购 DVD 租赁服务公司，后来从 2007 年开始转型为流媒体视频。其流媒体电影和电视节目选择有限，尤其是与其庞大的磁盘库相比，而且视频质量最初较差。但观众欣赏流媒体视频的便利性和低价。到 2011 年，该公司不再强调其 DVD 租赁业务，而是单独营销其流媒体服务。随着时间的推移，Netflix 提高了视频质量，增加了高清视频，然后是超高清内容。由于电视和电影制片厂越来越不重视流媒体，因此Netflix 愿意将流媒体版权授权给竞争对手，于是转向制作独特的内容，制作了数百部自己的电视节目和电影。到 2016 年，它已在除中国以外的世界上所有主要国家开展业务，并为其中大多数国家提供本地内容。截至 2020 年底，它拥有约 2 亿订阅用户，每年观看数十亿小时的视频。

The most popular subscription service is Netflix, started as a mail-order DVD rental service before transitioning to streaming video from 2007 onward. Its selection of movies and TV shows for streaming was limited, particularly in comparison to its huge disk library, and the video quality was initially worse. But viewers appreciated the convenience and low price of streaming video. By 2011, the company was de-emphasizing its DVD rental business in order to market its streaming service separately. Over time, Netflix improved its video quality, adding high-definition video and then ultrahigh-definition content. Because television and movie studios were becoming less willing to license streaming rights to a competitor, Netflix shifted into the production of unique content, producing hundreds of its own TV shows and movies. By 2016, it was operating in every major country in the world except China, offering local material for most of them. At the end of 2020, it had around 200 million subscribers watching many billions of hours of video every year.

在高峰时段，这些视频约占美国所有互联网传输数据的三分之一。这需要大量的服务器容量，但自 2016 年以来，Netflix 一直没有运营过一个数据中心。相反，它的系统由亚马逊网络服务托管，这使其快速的全球扩张成为可能。Netflix 还与互联网公司合作，在其数据中心放置独立的设备，这样视频通常无需通过网络之间的互联网主干网即可传输。

At peak times, these videos account for around a third of all the Internet data transmitted in the United States. That requires a spectacular amount of server capacity, but since 2016 Netflix hasn’t run a single data center. Instead, its systems are hosted by Amazon Web Services, which made possible its rapid global expansion. Netflix also partnered with internet companies to place self-contained appliances in their data centers, so that videos are usually delivered without having to pass over Internet backbones between networks.

Netflix 与 Hulu 和 Amazon Prime Video 等竞争对手一起改变了人们看电视的方式。有线电视订阅量在 2012 年达到顶峰，随后开始逐渐下降，光盘销量下降得更快。5^对于年轻人来说，必须在特定时间回家才能看节目的想法似乎很奇怪。流媒体视频最初需要在功能强大的 PC 上运行运行特殊插件软件的 Web 浏览器。这种设备不太可能出现在传统电视观看场所的客厅中，因此 Netflix 与光盘播放器生产商合作，增加了 Netflix 功能和特殊的遥控器按钮，以便更轻松地在电视上观看，并为平板电脑、手机和游戏机制作了可下载的应用程序，以便几乎任何有屏幕或可以插入电视的设备都可以播放 Netflix。在 2010 年代初期，这为许多任天堂 Wii 游戏机带来了第二次生命。最终，观看 Netflix 变得更加容易，因为更昂贵的电视被赋予了无需额外硬件即可下载应用程序和流式传输视频的智能功能，而流行的 Roku 和 Amazon Fire 流媒体盒和棒也为旧款和更便宜的型号添加了相同的功能。

Netflix, together with competitors such as Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, have changed the way people watch television. Cable television subscriptions peaked in 2012 before beginning a gradual decline, and disc sales have dropped faster.⁵ To younger people, the idea of having to be home at a certain time to watch a show seems strange. Streaming video originally took a Web browser running special plug-in software, running on a powerful PC. That equipment was unlikely to be found in a living room, where television has traditionally been watched, so Netflix worked with the producers of disc players to add Netflix capabilities and a special remote button to make it easier to watch on a television, and produced downloadable apps for tablets, phones, and game consoles so that pretty much anything with a screen or the capability to be plugged into a TV can stream Netflix. In the early 2010s, this brought a second life to many Nintendo Wii consoles. Eventually watching Netflix became even easier, as more expensive televisions were given the smart capability to download applications and stream video without extra hardware, and the popular Roku and Amazon Fire streaming boxes and sticks added the same capabilities to older and cheaper models.

观看 Netflix 成为一种简单且随时可得的活动，导致人们在一两天内“狂看”整季电视节目。这可以独自进行，也可以与朋友一起消磨时间，尽管到了 2015 年，由于互联网语言的神秘演变，“观看 Netflix 并放松”的邀请通常被理解为性亲密的邀请。

Watching Netflix became an easy and constantly available activity, leading to the practice of “binge watching” entire seasons of television shows in a day or two. That could be undertaken alone or to pass time with friends, although by 2015, thanks to the somewhat mysterious evolution of language on the Internet, an invitation to “Netflix and chill” was generally understood as an invitation to sexual intimacy.

早期社交媒体

Early Social Media

Web 2.0 概念很快就与另一个新词“社交媒体”纠缠在一起。Geocities 和 LiveJournal 等提供基于 Web 的网站和博客编辑工具的公司正在让位于创建和共享在线内容的新模式。这种模式结合了博客网站的内容发布功能和从 Classmates.com 等更集中的社交网站借用建立个人资料和寻找老朋友的重点。这些网站的模式是 2002 年推出的 Friendster.com。它一炮打响，在几个月内就吸引了 300 万名用户，并在报纸和电视上广泛报道。据《纽约时报》报道，它的创建者“将 Friendster 设想为一个约会网站，但人们的社交好奇心将其变成了一个每个人都成为不断展开的戏剧（或喜剧）联系中心的地方。”《纽约时报》惊叹道：“色情女王和风险投资家与新纳粹分子和普通的嬉皮士共享该网站。” ⁸

The Web 2.0 concept was soon entangled with another new phrase: social media. A wave of companies providing Web-based tools for the editing of websites and blogs, such as Geocities and LiveJournal, was giving way to newer models for creating and sharing online content. This combined the content-posting features of blogging sites with a focus on establishing personal profiles and finding old friends borrowed from more tightly focused social networking sites such as Classmates.com. The model for these sites was Friendster.com, launched in 2002. It was an instant success, signing up three million users within a few months and receiving extensive coverage in newspaper and television profiles. According to the New York Times, its creator “conceived of Friendster as a dating site, but people’s social curiosity turned it into a place where everyone becomes the center of an unfolding drama (or comedy) of connections.” “Porn queens and venture capitalists,” marveled the Times, “share the site with neo-Nazis and garden-variety hipsters.”⁸

到 2005 年，Friendster 已被竞争对手 Myspace 超越，后者在青少年和音乐家中特别受欢迎。Myspace 的个人资料可高度定制，并且倾向于使用冲突的颜色、自动播放音乐和动画图形来填充。Myspace 是第一个吸引一亿用户的社交网络。几年内，它为其受欢迎的成功用户定义了一种新的名声，这些用户的角色与其欢快的低俗美学相呼应。其中最引人注目的是裸体模特和有抱负的音乐家蒂拉·特基拉 (Tila Tequila)，她利用自己在 Myspace 上的成功，在 MTV 真人秀节目《蒂拉·特基拉的爱情一击》中担任主角。就像 Myspace 本身一样，特基拉的成功是短暂的。在后来的几年里，媒体的报道逐渐减少，重新集中在她对阿道夫·希特勒的崇拜和对地球是平的的信仰上。

By 2005, Friendster had been overtaken by a rival, Myspace, which proved particularly popular with teenagers and musicians. Myspace profiles were heavily customizable, and tended to fill up with clashing colors, autoplaying music, and animated graphics. Myspace was the first social network to attract a hundred million users. For a few years it defined a new kind of fame for its popular successful users, whose personae chimed with its cheerfully trashy aesthetic. The most prominent of all, nude model and aspiring musician Tila Tequila, parlayed her Myspace success into a starring role in the MTV reality show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. Like Myspace itself, Tequila’s success was short lived. In later years, media coverage dwindled and refocused on her professed admiration for Adolf Hitler and belief in a flat earth.

社交媒体服务、播客、博客网站和 Tumblr 等平台允许用户分享和注释照片，模糊了素材生产者、消费者和分销商之间的界限。就像采样对音乐的影响一样，用户在分享素材时会重新混音、添加讽刺性字幕或重新诠释素材。封闭亚文化中发展起来的实践，例如科幻迷文化，如今可以通过数字方式传播，其传播规模以前只有大众媒体的专业产品才有可能。媒体学者 Jean Burgess 将此称为“本土创造力”，即让普通人的声音被听到的一种方式^。9

Social media services, podcasting, blogging sites, and platforms such as Tumblr, which let users share and annotate photographs, blurred the lines between the producers, consumers, and distributors of material. As with the influence of sampling on music, users remixed, ironically captioned, or reinterpreted material as they shared it. Practices developed in closed subcultures, such as science fiction fandom, could now spread digitally on a scale previously possible only for the professional products of mass media. Media scholar Jean Burgess called this “vernacular creativity,” a way for the voices of ordinary people to be heard.⁹

Facebook

Facebook

2009 年，Facebook 取代 Myspace 成为领先的社交网络，它由哈佛大学一名学生的项目发展而来，并迅速扩展到其他精英校园。从大学生开始是合理的，因为他们对新技术持开放态度，拥有良好的互联网接入，并能快速了解同学在使用什么。Facebook 于 2004 年夏天成立。该网站于 2006 年向非学校附属机构的人士开放会员资格。尽管比第一批商业网站落后了十年，但事实证明它的时机非常完美。社交网络概念只有在大量朋友和熟人愿意加入该系统时才会奏效。到 2006 年，公众在更快的连接速度下花费了更多时间上网，这使得大型、图形繁多的页面加载速度更快^。10

Facebook, which in 2009 displaced Myspace as the leading social network, evolved from a Harvard University student’s project and quickly expanded to other elite campuses. Starting with college students made sense, as they were open to new technology, had good Internet access, and were quick to learn what their classmates were using. Facebook became a company in the summer of 2004. The site opened membership to people without a school affiliation in 2006. Despite lagging the first commercial websites by a decade, its timing turned out to be perfect. The social network concept works only if a large cohort of friends and acquaintances are prepared to join the system. By 2006, the public was spending more time online with faster connections, making large, graphics-heavy pages quick to load.¹⁰

Facebook 最初是用 PHP 代码编写的，随着系统的发展，其核心平台的大部分代码仍保留在 PHP 中。该公司为 PHP 开发了许多扩展，包括一个用于输出 C ++代码以供编译以提高性能的模块。其应用程序以一个巨大的数据库为中心，Facebook 首席执行官马克·扎克伯格将其称为社交图谱。图谱一词源于数学。它表明该公司的重点是事物之间的联系。关于“喜欢”、帖子、页面和消息的数据都与平台的用户相关——这使它拥有世界上最广泛的个人习惯和品味数据集合。与 Google 的服务一样，Facebook 运行在数千台个人电脑上，而不是一台巨型主机上。

Facebook began as PHP code, and much of its core platform remained in PHP as the system grew. The firm produced many extensions for PHP, including a module to output C++ code to be compiled for improved performance. Its applications center on a gigantic database, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the social graph. The term graph comes from mathematics. It indicates that the company’s focus is on the connections between things. Data on “likes,” posts, pages, and messages all link to the platform’s users—giving it the world’s most extensive collection of data about the habits and tastes of individual people. Like Google’s services, Facebook runs on thousands of personal computers rather than a giant mainframe.

Facebook 迅速成为其重度用户生活的粘合剂，并成为美国文化的重要组成部分。Facebook 推出仅六年后，奥斯卡获奖热门电影《社交网络》就讲述了 Facebook 的创立和早期发展的故事。这部电影巩固了扎克伯格作为新比尔盖茨的地位，当时他才 20 多岁，已经是纸面上的亿万富翁。与同样从哈佛辍学的盖茨一样，扎克伯格既被嘲笑又被赞扬为冷酷的书呆子梦想家，为了追求权力和难以想象的财富，他不惜粉碎敌人和前合伙人。2012 年，Facebook 首次公开募股时，其估值创下逾千亿美元，据报道，其活跃用户超过八亿，每年广告利润超过十亿美元。该公司进一步增长的动力是移动互联网平台的普及，这些平台可以访问 Facebook 发送消息、浏览新闻提要和从任何地方发布图片。

Facebook quickly became the glue holding together the lives of its heaviest users and a prominent part of American culture. Just six years after its launch, the story of Facebook’s founding and early growth was told in the Oscar-winning hit movie The Social Network. The movie cemented the position of Zuckerberg, still in his mid-20s and already a paper billionaire, as the new Bill Gates. Like Gates, who had also dropped out of Harvard, Zuckerberg was both mocked and celebrated as a ruthless nerd visionary, crushing enemies and former partners alike in his pursuit of power and barely imaginable wealth. In 2012, when Facebook made its initial public offering of stock, it commanded a record valuation of more than a hundred billion dollars, underpinned by its reported pool of more than eight hundred million active users and advertising-driven profits of more than a billion dollars a year. The company’s further growth was driven by the popularity of mobile Internet platforms able to access Facebook to send messages, browse newsfeeds, and post pictures from anywhere.

随着时间的推移，Facebook 的设计和最广泛使用的功能发生了根本性的变化。例如，2009 年，它将自己宣传为一个平台，其他公司可以在该平台上构建应用程序，以利用其用户建立的联系。其中最受欢迎的一款应用 FarmVille 是一款游戏，其核心内容是反复点击奶牛挤奶、点击鸡收集鸡蛋以及点击田地耕种、播种和收割。不到一年，这款游戏的玩家数量就超过 8000 万，这促使游戏评论家 Ian Bogost 创作了一款模仿游戏 Cow Clicker，这款游戏本身也非常受欢迎^。11

Facebook’s design and most widely used functions have changed fundamentally over time. In 2009, for example, it was promoting itself as a platform, on which other companies could build applications to exploit the connections established by its users. FarmVille, the most popular of these applications, was a game that centered on repeatedly clicking cows to milk them, clicking chickens to collect their eggs, and clicking fields to plow, plant, and harvest. Within a year more than eighty million people were playing it, inspiring game critic Ian Bogost to create a parody, Cow Clicker, which itself proved alarmingly popular.¹¹

Facebook 鼓励其他网站嵌入按钮以在 Facebook 上分享内容并显示收到的赞数。Facebook 用户积累了如此多的好友并赞了如此多的页面，以至于每隔几秒钟就会在其个性化新闻提要中出现新的更新。2008 年，Facebook 聘请了前谷歌广告团队负责人谢丽尔·桑德伯格 (Sheryl Sandberg) 担任首席运营官。随后进行了一系列变革。为了应对 Twitter（一个以公开发布 140 个字符的简洁消息为特征的平台）的突然流行，Facebook 重新制定了用于确定更新优先级的算法，即决定突出显示哪些更新以及隐藏哪些更新。新系统不再强调来自亲密好友的更新，而是青睐付费广告帖、名人帖以及在网络其他地方广泛分享的潜在病毒式内容。12^随着移动互联网设备越来越受欢迎，Facebook 开始强调消息和聊天功能。

Facebook encouraged other websites to embed buttons to share content on Facebook and display the number of likes received. Facebook users accumulated so many friends and liked so many pages that new updates arrived every few seconds in its personalized News Feed. In 2008, Facebook hired Sheryl Sandberg, formerly the leader of Google’s advertising team, as chief operating officer. A series of changes followed. To counter the sudden popularity of Twitter, a platform defined by the public posting of messages restricted to a terse 140 characters, Facebook reworked the algorithm used to prioritize updates by deciding which to highlight and which to bury. The new system de-emphasized updates from close friends in favor of paid advertising posts, posts from celebrities, and potentially viral items widely shared elsewhere on the network.¹² As mobile Internet devices became more popular, Facebook emphasized messaging and chat features.

Facebook 的成功削弱了博客对普通用户的吸引力——Facebook 帖子比博客文章更容易被分享和评论。相比之下，吸引大量访问者和评论的更成功的博客发展成为媒体公司。他们雇佣员工，专业化编辑和制作，并通过用户订阅来维持生计。例如，历史学家转行成为网络出版商的乔希·马歇尔 (Josh Marshall) 于 2000 年 11 月推出了他的政治博客 Talking Points Memo，当时佛罗里达州正在激烈讨论有争议的总统选举结果。他作为博主的个人技能吸引了足够多的读者，足以让他雇用一个不断壮大的记者团队。其他领域的博客也走上了类似的轨迹，如技术法 (Techdirt)、名人八卦 (PerezHilton.com)、消费者技术评论 (Engadget) 和个人生产力 (LifeHacker)。

Facebook’s success undermined the appeal of blogging to more casual users—Facebook posts were more likely to be shared and commented on than blog entries. In contrast, the more successful blogs that attracted large numbers of visitors and comments evolved into media companies. They hired staff members, professionalized their editing and production, and supported themselves with user subscriptions. For example, the historian turned Web publisher Josh Marshall launched his political blog Talking Points Memo in November 2000, during heated discussion of the disputed presidential vote count in Florida. His personal skills as a blogger drew enough readers to underwrite hiring a growing team of reporters. Similar trajectories were followed by blogs in other areas such as technology law (Techdirt), celebrity gossip (PerezHilton.com), consumer technology reviews (Engadget), and personal productivity (LifeHacker).

广告大获成功

Advertising Triumphant

尽管 Facebook 坚称自己是一个通讯平台，而不是一家媒体公司，但 Facebook 的选择比任何一家报纸或电视网络都更能吸引人们的注意。合作公司抱怨称，Facebook 界面或算法的突然调整可能会毁掉他们投资的项目。例如，2015 年，Facebook 开始大力宣传自己是一个视频平台出版业，鼓励媒体公司“转向视频”，希望 Facebook 能带来观众和广告收入。随后，Facebook 突然不再强调共享视频，因为有人指责它伪造了观看人数，而这一度让他们的创作看起来像是让在线出版在经济上可行的最大希望。

Although Facebook has insisted that it is a communications platform and not a media company, Facebook’s choices direct the attention of far more people than any single newspaper or television network. Partner firms complained that sudden tweaks to Facebook interfaces or its algorithms could destroy projects in which they had invested their future. In 2015, for example, it had begun to heavily promote itself as a platform for video publishing, encouraging media companies to “pivot to video” in the hope that Facebook would bring viewers and advertising revenue. Then Facebook abruptly de-emphasized shared videos amid accusations that it had faked the viewing figures that briefly made their creation seem like the best hope for making online publishing economically viable.

所有这些战术转变和佯攻都凝聚在一个一致的战略目标上，即鼓励用户在 Facebook 上花费更多时间并分享更多个人信息。用户不应该在 Facebook 上搜索或浏览网页、发送电子邮件以及使用各种服务来做诸如分享图片或发送邀请活动之类的事情。这让 Facebook 可以销售更多广告，而且更重要的是，它可以通过交叉引用所有在线活动的线索来收集更多有关用户的数据。

What held all these tactical shifts and feints together was a consistent strategic goal to encourage users to spend more and more time within Facebook and share more and more of their personal information. Instead of searching or browsing the Web, sending email, and using a variety of services to do things like share pictures or send invitation events, users should do everything within Facebook. That let Facebook sell more advertising and, potentially more importantly, gather more data on its users by cross referencing clues from all their online activities.

Facebook 是一个极端的例子，它体现了一种更大的现象：几乎所有世界上访问量最大的网站都是靠广告支撑起来的。这种模式从网络出版商扩展到新型网络服务，包括社交媒体网站、视频共享，甚至色情内容。到 2010 年代中期，免费网站 Pornhub 和 xvideos.com 已经基本消灭了曾经盈利的订阅色情网站和 DVD 销售业务。它们播放用户上传的视频，其中许多视频都是盗版的，表演者或版权持有者无需支付版税。13^如今的表演者主要依靠在脱衣舞俱乐部客串和定制视频来获得收入。

Facebook is an extreme example of a larger phenomenon: almost all the world’s most visited websites are supported by advertising. The model spread from Web publishers to new kinds of Web services, including social media sites, video sharing, and eventually even pornography. By the mid-2010s, free sites Pornhub and xvideos.com had largely wiped out the once profitable businesses of subscription porn websites and DVD sales. They stream videos uploaded by users, many of them pirated with no royalties to the performers or copyright holders.¹³ Today’s performers rely on guest appearances in strip clubs and personalized videos for the bulk of their income.

这种模式并不普遍。Craigslist 和 Wikipedia 是两个最受欢迎的互联网平台，它们以社区服务而非利润最大化机器的形式运营。Wikipedia 由一家非营利基金会所有，与美国全国公共广播电台一样，主要通过要求用户捐款来维持运营。它的发展受到自由软件运动意识形态的影响，尤其是 wiki ^，一种协作在线编辑工具。14 Craigslist 是一个在线分类广告网站，在很大程度上取代了地方报纸以前的主要收入来源。Craigslist 是一家私营企业，但其创始人 Craig Newmark 并没有上市，而是意识到，只要向发布招聘信息的公司收取少量费用，他就能赚到足够的钱过上好日子。该网站保留了极具复古风格的设计，自 1990 年代以来几乎没有什么明显的变化。该网站不显示任何广告（除了人们访问阅读的分类广告），大多数卖家无需支付任何费用即可列出他们的商品和服务。¹⁵ Craigslist 和维基百科的成功证明，互联网上猖獗的商业化是一种选择，而非必然。

The model is not quite universal. Craigslist and Wikipedia, two of the most popular Internet platforms, run as community services rather than profit-maximizing machines. Wikipedia is owned by a nonprofit foundation and, like National Public Radio in the US, supports itself largely by asking its users to make donations. Its development was shaped by the ideology of the free software movement, particularly the wiki, a tool for collaborative online editing.¹⁴ Craigslist is an online site for classified advertisements, largely supplanting that formerly central source of revenue for local newspapers. Craigslist is a private business, but rather than go public, its founder Craig Newmark realized that he could bring in more than enough money to live well simply by charging a small fee to companies posting job openings. The site has retained an aggressively old-fashioned design, with few visible changes since the 1990s. The site displays no advertising (other than the classifieds that people visit to read) and most sellers pay nothing to list their goods and services.¹⁵ The success of Craigslist and Wikipedia proves that the rampant commercialism of so much of the Internet is a choice rather than an inevitability.

Java 和网络计算机

Java and the Network Computer

20 世纪 90 年代中期，Java 首次推动了 Web 浏览器成为高度互动的在线应用程序平台。从 1991 年开始，James Gosling 和 Sun 的一个小程序员团队开发了一种语言，允许将交互式应用程序下载到数字有线电视机顶盒上。该语言被重新命名为Java，并于 1995 年 3 月公开发布^。16

The first big push to turn Web browsers into a platform for highly interactive online applications came with Java in the mid-1990s. Beginning in 1991, James Gosling, along with a small team of other programmers at Sun, developed a language to allow interactive applications to be downloaded to digital cable television boxes. Renamed Java, it was publicly announced in March 1995.¹⁶

Sun 的“一次编写，随处运行”口号承诺 Java 程序可在任何计算机上运行，​​无论大型或小型，无需修改。这让一个旧观念复活了。例如，1981 年发布的 IBM PC 有三种操作系统可供选择：MS-DOS、CP/M 86（发布太晚且价格太高，无法普及）和加利福尼亚大学圣地亚哥分校 (UCSD) 的p 系统。p 系统源自用于实现 Pascal 语言的技术（同样的技术以 Apple Pascal 的形式出售给 Apple II，它也取代了通常的操作系统）。p 系统的应用程序不是以可执行机器语言的形式分发，而是以虚拟伪机器的代码形式分发。运行应用程序时，代码被解释为实际计算机的指令。这样做的好处是可移植性，因为只需重写 p 代码解释器即可在特定计算机上运行。该系统从未流行起来的一个原因是 IBM PC 很快就成为了标准，因此应用程序直接针对其硬件更有意义，因为这样可以获得更快的性能并能够充分利用其功能。

Sun’s pitch of “write it once, run it anywhere” promised that a Java program could run on any computer, large or small, without modification. This revived an old idea. For example, the IBM PC was announced in 1981 with three operating system choices: MS-DOS, CP/M 86 (released too late and priced too high to take off), or the p-system from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The p-system was derived from technology used to implement the Pascal language (the same technology was sold for the Apple II as Apple Pascal, which also replaced the usual operating system). Applications for the p-system were distributed not as executable machine language but as code for an imaginary pseudomachine. When the application program was run, the code was interpreted into instructions for the actual computer. The advantage was portability, because only the p-code interpreter needed to be rewritten to work on specific computers. One reason the system never caught on was that the IBM PC quickly became a standard, so it made more sense for applications to directly target its hardware, which yielded faster performance and access to its full capabilities.

十几年后，互联网将各种各样的计算机连接起来，并且有计划将互联网扩展到电视、手持式记事本和手机。Java 的出现恰逢 Netscape 的崛起，Netscape 抓住了 Java 的机会，为网页设计师提供了让网页动起来、移动起来和互动起来的方法。HTML 定义了静态页面：直到用户单击按钮或链接加载另一个页面时，页面才会发生变化。Java 小程序用交互式控件填充了网页的一部分。当用户单击某个内容时，PC 上运行的代码会立即做出反应，而无需等待 Web 服务器生成新页面并让浏览器加载它。

A dozen years later, the Internet interconnected a diverse range of computers, and there were plans to extend access to televisions, hand-held organizers, and cell phones. Java’s arrival coincided with the rise of Netscape, which seized on it as a way for Web page designers to give their pages animation, movement, and interactivity. HTML defined static pages: nothing changed until a user clicked a button or a link, which loaded another page. Java applets filled part of a Web page with interactive controls. When the user clicked something, code running on the PC reacted immediately, without waiting for a Web server to generate a new page and the browser to load it.

公司纷纷在设备和操作系统中添加 Java 支持，程序员纷纷学习 Java，软件工具公司纷纷生产 Java 开发辅助工具。Java 被誉为打破微软对个人计算的垄断的一种方式。如果人们可以通过互联网访问他们需要的任何软件，谁还需要购买微软 Office？如果这些程序是用 Java 编写的，谁会在乎计算机甚至运行 Windows？Netscape 的 Marc Andreessen 明确表达了这一威胁，他承诺他的公司可以把 Windows 变成一个“调试不佳的设备驱动程序集”，用于运行其浏览器和 Sun 的 Java 引擎^。17

Companies rushed to add Java support to their devices and operating systems, programmers to learn Java, and software tools companies to produce Java development aids. Java was heralded as a way to break Microsoft’s hold on personal computing. If people could access whatever software they needed via the Internet, who needed to buy Microsoft Office? If those programs were written in Java, who cared if the computer even ran Windows? Netscape’s Marc Andreessen made the threat explicit when he promised that his firm could turn Windows into nothing more than a “poorly debugged set of device drivers” used to run its browser and Sun’s Java engine.¹⁷

微软的对手在与 Windows 的竞争中收效甚微，但 Java 却有可能取代个人电脑本身。Sun、Oracle 和 IBM 联合起来颁布了网络计算机的新标准。这是个人电脑和终端的混合体。与终端一样，它只有在连接到网络时才能工作，并且没有自己的磁盘驱动器。与个人电脑一样，它有一个功能强大的处理器来本地运行 Java 程序，而不像终端那样完全依赖服务器的处理器能力。网络计算机以总拥有成本(TCO) 的概念来推广，这一想法源自 Gartner 集团。Gartner 分析师指出，个人电脑的购买价格只是企业实际成本的一小部分。1996 年，Gartner 估计每台个人电脑的五年总成本约为 44,000 美元。这个数字是十年前拥有一台 DOS PC 成本的两倍多。18Windows^很复杂。大部分费用来自 IT 支持、网络基础设施、软件、升级，以及用户因摆弄屏幕保护程序和试图找出文档无法打印的原因而浪费的工作时间。这在公司环境中尤其如此。必须在每台 PC 上安装并保持最新的自定义客户端应用程序，以及与服务器组件通信所需的网络配置和数据库连接。网络 PC 的真正节省在于通过减少用户和支持人员摆弄每台计算机的时间，大幅削减支持成本。

Microsoft’s rivals had met little success competing with Windows, but Java raised the possibility of taking down the personal computer itself. Sun, Oracle, and IBM joined together to promulgate a new standard for the network computer. This was a hybrid between a personal computer and a terminal. Like a terminal, it worked only when connected to a network and had no disk drive of its own. Like a personal computer, it had a capable processor to run Java programs locally rather than rely entirely on the processor power of the server as terminals did. The network computer was promoted with the concept of total cost of ownership (TCO), an idea originated by the Gartner Group. Gartner analysts pointed out that the purchase price of a PC was a small part of its actual cost to a business. In 1996, Gartner estimated the total five-year cost of each PC to be around $44,000. That was more than double the cost of owning a DOS PC a decade earlier.¹⁸ Windows was complicated. Most of the expense came from IT support, network infrastructure, software, upgrades, and work time lost as users tinkered with screen savers and tried to figure out why documents wouldn’t print. That was particularly true in a corporate environment. Custom client applications had to be installed and kept current on each PC, together with the network configurations and database connections needed to communicate with their server components. The real savings from a network PC would come from slashing support costs by reducing the time users and support staff spent fiddling with each computer.

Corel 以绘图软件而闻名，1996 年，它收购了 WordPerfect 和其他应用软件，以打造与微软 Office 套件竞争的产品。为了赶上 Java 的潮流，Corel 宣布计划用 Java 重写其办公套件，以便它可以在 Windows、Macintosh 和 Unix 以及网络计算机和其他新兴平台上运行。这是一个令人兴奋的策略，但 Corel 生产的软件凸显了 Java 的局限性：速度极慢、容易挂起，并且缺少 Windows 版本的许多功能。Java 虚拟机阻止打印、本地保存文件或在应用程序之间剪切和粘贴。19^在发布几个预览版本后，Corel 放弃了 Java 计划，从未发布过实际产品。

Corel, known primarily for its drawing software, had by 1996 snapped up WordPerfect and other application software to build a competitor to Microsoft’s Office suite. Jumping on the Java bandwagon, it announced plans to rewrite its office suite in Java so that it could run on Windows, Macintosh, and Unix as well as network computers and other emerging platforms. That was an exciting strategy, but the software Corel produced underlined the limitations of Java: agonizingly slow, prone to hanging, and missing many of the features of the Windows versions. The Java virtual machine prevented printing, saving files locally, or cutting and pasting between applications.¹⁹ After several preview versions, Corel abandoned its Java initiative without ever having released an actual product.

网络计算机主要由 Oracle 销售，但最终在 2000 年放弃了。由于 Java 应用程序很少，它们主要用作图形 Unix 终端，所有处理都在服务器上完成。互联网访问速度仍然很慢，尤其是在家庭中，这限制了必须下载所有程序和数据的设备的实用性。PC 成本迅速下降，功能齐全的 PC 和网络计算机之间的成本差距缩小了。微软对这一威胁的反应是，在 Windows 中构建集中管理功能，以便系统管理员可以自动推出更新并锁定系统以防止用户对其进行修改。

Network computers were marketed primarily by Oracle, which finally gave up in 2000. With few Java applications available, they were used primarily as graphical Unix terminals, with all the processing done on servers. Internet access remained slow, particularly at home, limiting the usefulness of a device that had to download all its programs and data. PC costs had fallen rapidly, closing the cost gap between a fully featured PC and a network computer. Microsoft reacted to the threat by building centralized administration capabilities into Windows, so that system administrators could roll out updates automatically and lock down systems to prevent users from tinkering with them.

Java 小程序也失败了。它们笨拙地嵌入网页中，就像屏幕中的屏幕。等待 Java 繁重的页面通过缓慢的电话连接加载可能是一种令人麻木的体验。最大的问题是兼容性。Java 应该提供标准的虚拟机，但实际上，实现方式不同，并且不断更新。程序可能只在一个版本的 Java 浏览器上运行，而当任何一个版本更新时，程序就会突然失败。人们对小程序的兴趣迅速消退，尤其是当黑客学会利用 Sun Java 平台的安全漏洞时。到 2010 年代初，专家们敦促用户在浏览器中禁用 Java 支持。

Java applets also flopped. They sat awkwardly within Web pages, like a screen within a screen. Waiting for a Java-heavy page to load through a slow telephone connection could be a mind-numbing experience. The biggest problem was compatibility. Java was supposed to provide a standard virtual machine, but in practice, implementations differed and were constantly being updated. Programs might work in only one browser release with one version of Java and abruptly fail when either was updated. Interest in applets quickly faded, especially as hackers learned to exploit security holes in Sun’s Java platform. By the early 2010s, experts were urging users to disable Java support in their browsers.

Java 在事物更可控的环境中取得了更大的成功，比如它最初是为交互式有线电视盒设计的。21 世纪初期的手机开始采用 Java 作为运行应用程序的一种方式。但它在两个意想不到的领域取得了最大的成功。其一是作为一种教学语言：计算机科学系接受 Java 作为 C ++和 Pascal 的替代品。它是面向对象的，但比 C ++更容易学习，并且由于它的虚拟机，它能够捕获和诊断会导致 C ++程序崩溃的问题。另一个是作为一种编写在服务器上运行的代码片段的语言，包括在 Web 服务器（称为servelets ）或数据库管理系统等其他工具内运行的代码。Java 仍然是世界上使用最广泛的编程语言之一。

Java was somewhat more successful in environments where things were more controlled, such as the interactive cable boxes for which it had originally been designed. Cellphones of the early 2000s began to incorporate Java as a way of running application programs. But it enjoyed its biggest successes in two unanticipated areas. One was as a teaching language: computer science departments embraced Java as a substitute for C++ and Pascal. It was object oriented but easier to learn than C++ and, because of its virtual machine, able to catch and diagnose problems that would cause a C++ program to crash. The other was as a language for writing code snippets to run on servers, including code to run on Web servers (dubbed servelets) or inside other tools like database management systems. Java remains one of the world’s most widely used programming languages.

软件作为服务

Software as a Service

21 世纪初期，计算机行业掀起了一场关于“软件即服务” (SaaS) 的讨论。一家公司可以订购一款通过 Web 浏览器访问的应用程序。无需安装其他软件，因为浏览器可以充当通用客户端。数据将存储在云端，公司无需承担备份或保护数据的责任。新功能将出现在应用程序中，无需将服务器迁移到新版本或安装更新的客户端软件。

In the early 2000s, the computer industry was gripped by discussion of an exciting new idea: Software as a Service (SaaS). A company would purchase a subscription to an application accessed via Web browsers. No other software had to be installed, because the browser worked as a universal client. Data would be stored somewhere in the cloud, freeing companies from the responsibility for backing up or securing it. New features would appear in the application without any need to migrate servers to a new version or install updated client software.

这一模式在早期推动 Java 和网络计算机失败的地方取得了成功。新模式的第一个重大成功是 1999 年成立的 Salesforce.com。其核心产品是一款客户关系管理应用程序，整合了销售人员所需的所有功能，包括记录实际和潜在客户的信息、跟踪预约以及记录需要服务人员跟进的问题。当时已经有很多软件包可以满足这些需求，但 Salesforce 与 Web 完美契合，因为销售人员大部分时间都不在办公室。SaaS 在小型企业中也很受欢迎。例如，大多数健身房没有服务器或 IT现场工作人员的加入，使该行业迅速转向基于订阅的服务，其中记录访客、会员续费和小额购买等所有功能都由订阅服务提供。到 2010 年代，新模式开始扩展到更大的公司和更复杂的应用程序。甚至 SAP 也开始为其企业应用程序推广云模式。

This succeeded where the earlier push for Java and network computers had failed. The first major success for the new model was Salesforce.com, established in 1999. Its core product was a customer relationship management application, consolidating all the capabilities sales people needed to log information on actual and potential customers, track appointments, and log issues to be followed up by service personnel. There were already plenty of packages to handle these needs, but Salesforce was a perfect fit with the Web because salespeople spend most of their time out of the office. SaaS was also popular with smaller businesses. For example, most gyms do not have servers or IT staff onsite, so the industry switched rapidly to subscription-based services in which all the capabilities needed to log visitors, bill for membership renewals and small purchases, and so on were taken care of. By the 2010s, the new model was spreading to larger companies and more complex applications. Even SAP started promoting the cloud model for its enterprise applications.

历史学家记忆力很好，喜欢争论这种模式到底有多新。20例如，在²⁰世纪 70 年代，分时公司之所以受欢迎，更多的是因为它们提供在线应用程序的访问，而不是简单地访问交互式计算机。终端不需要安装任何软件。从长远来看，20 世纪 80 年代对独立个人电脑的热情和 20 世纪 90 年代对客户端-服务器应用程序的热情可能看起来与历史常态有出入。但正如 Java 的故事所表明的那样，将 Web 浏览器重新打造为流畅、功能强大的在线应用程序界面，并能够作为 20 世纪 70 年代文本终端的现代替代品，需要付出大量努力。

Historians, having long memories, like to quibble about exactly how new the model really was.²⁰ Back in the 1970s, for example, timesharing companies were popular more for the access they offered to online applications rather than for simple access to an interactive computer. Terminals did not need to have any software installed on them. With a longer perspective, enthusiasm for freestanding personal computers in the 1980s and for client-server applications in the 1990s may look like an odd departure from the historical norm. But as the story of Java shows, it took considerable work to remake Web browsers into a smooth and capable interface for online applications, able to serve as a modern replacement for the text terminals of the 1970s.

Ajax — 浏览器窗口中的交互式应用程序

Ajax—Interactive Applications in a Browser Window

20 世纪 90 年代中期，网络为基于网络的应用程序开发人员提供了两种相互竞争的方法。一种方法是快速加载的 HTML 页面，没有交互性，因此响应用户选择的选项需要生成和传输整个新页面。另一种方法是交互式 Java 小程序或 Shockwave 动画，它可以立即响应输入，但加载速度很慢，并且只有用户事先安装了正确的插件才能工作。

The Web of the mid-1990s offered two rival approaches for the developers of Web-based applications. One approach was a fast-loading HTML page with no interactivity, so that responding to an option selected by a user involved generating and transmitting a whole new page. The other approach was an interactive Java applet or Shockwave animation that could respond immediately to inputs but would load slowly and work only if a user had previously installed the right plug-in to handle it.

1995 年底，Netscape 推出了一种名为 JavaScript 的语言，提供了第三种方式。它与 Java 并无实际联系 — 这个名字是一种营销手段，旨在利用 Java 的炒作。JavaScript 是一种笨重的语言，设计仅用了 10 天，最初漏洞百出。但它的功能非常有用：开发人员可以在网页中嵌入代码片段，当输入框中的值更新或用户单击按钮时运行这些代码片段。这些小程序可以检查日期格式是否正确，隐藏选中选项时不需要的控件，或警告用户数据未保存。微软迅速将 JavaScript 复制到 Internet Explorer，到 1997 年，JavaScript 已实现标准化。

A language called JavaScript, introduced by Netscape in late 1995, provided a third way. It had no real connection to Java—the name was a piece of marketing intended to exploit the Java hype. JavaScript was a clunky language, designed in ten days and initially very buggy. But what it did was very useful: developers could embed code snippets inside a Web page to be run when the value in an input box was updated or a user clicked on a button. These tiny programs could check that a date was in the correct format, hide controls that weren’t needed with the option selected, or warn users that data had not been saved. Microsoft quickly copied JavaScript for Internet Explorer, and by 1997 it had been standardized.

到 2000 年代中期，Web 开发人员开始发现创造性的方法，利用现有技术来创建更复杂、更高效的交互式页面。关键在于从服务器提取新数据而无需重新加载整个页面。许多人第一次看到这种功能是在 Google 的 Gmail 服务中，该服务允许用户在动态页面中撰写和过滤邮件，以及 Google 的地图系统，该系统允许用户使用鼠标滚动和缩放地图，无需重新加载页面即可填写地图的空白部分。这些功能适用于不同的浏览器和^{操作系统，}无需任何插件或下载。该技术将 JavaScript 与数据格式化方法 XML 相结合。在 2005 年的一篇描述新方法的文章中，Web 设计师 Jesse James Garrett 将其称为 Ajax，代表异步 JavaScript + XML。21

By the mid-2000s, Web developers were beginning to discover creative ways to use existing technologies to create much more complex and efficient kinds of interactive pages. The key was to pull in new data from the server without reloading the whole page. Many people saw the capability for the first time in Google’s Gmail service, which let users compose and filter messages within a dynamic page, and Google’s Maps system, which let users scroll and zoom the map with the mouse, filling in blank parts of the map without a page reload. These capabilities worked on different browsers and operating systems without requiring any plugins or downloads. The technique combined JavaScript with XML, a data formatting method. In a 2005 article describing the new approach, Web designer Jesse James Garrett dubbed it Ajax, which stood for asynchronous JavaScript + XML.²¹

这个名字和方法都流传至今。Ajax 无需 Flash 或 Java 即可支持流畅而强大的 Web 应用程序。这些技术使 Facebook 和 Instagram 等新平台的 Web 界面具有了交互性。Ajax 的功能不断进步，同时 HTML 和相关技术（如层叠样式表）也得到了改进^。22

The name stuck and so did the approach. Ajax underpinned smooth and powerful Web applications without the need for Flash or Java. The techniques enabled the interactive Web interfaces of new based platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The capabilities of Ajax have continued to advance, along with improvements to HTML and allied technologies such as cascading style sheets.²²

在线办公应用程序

Online Office Applications

自 20 世纪 70 年代以来，文字处理和电子表格程序一直是使用最广泛的计算机应用程序之一。两者都注重交互性而非处理能力，因此非常适合 PC。但随着 Web 应用程序 Ajax 技术的兴起，甚至这些任务也变成了用户可以使用 Web 浏览器执行的任务。

Since the 1970s, word processing and spreadsheet programs had been among the most widely used computer applications. Both put a premium on interactivity over processing power, making them well suited to PCs. But with the rise of Ajax techniques for Web applications, even these tasks became something that users could carry out using their Web browsers.

Google Docs 是第一个广泛使用的在线办公套件，它基于 Google 在 2006 年和 2007 年收购的产品。功能有限，尤其是在早期。例如，文字处理器最初不支持脚注或邮件合并 - 这些功能自 1980 年代以来一直是高端软件包中常见的功能。与此相反，云模型在从公共计算机（例如校园计算机实验室或图书馆中的计算机）编辑文档时具有巨大优势，或者当不同地点的人需要协作编辑文档时也是如此。团队成员无需交换文件即可访问最新版本，并且可以轻松跟踪修订。这实现了 40 年前 Doug Engelbart 的 NLS 系统展示的协作编辑愿景。随后出现了其他系统，包括 Microsoft 自己的 Office 产品的在线版本。这些系统通常对个人使用免费，依靠广告商的收入以及具有更多功能或在线存储空间的高级帐户的订阅费。这将广告支持的互联网出版模式扩展到了个人计算机软件市场的传统核心。

Google Docs, the first widely used online office suite, was based on products acquired by Google in 2006 and 2007. Features were limited, particularly in its early days. For example, the word processor did not initially support footnotes or mail merge—features common in high-end packages since the 1980s. Counterbalancing this, the cloud model had a big advantage in editing documents from public computers, such as those in campus computer laboratories or libraries, or when people in different locations needed to collaboratively edit a document. Team members have access to the latest version without having to exchange files, and revisions can easily be tracked. This delivered on the vision of collaborative editing showcased by Doug Engelbart’s NLS system forty years earlier. Other systems followed, including online versions of Microsoft’s own Office products. These systems are generally free for personal use, relying on revenue from advertisers and from subscription fees for premium accounts with more features or online storage space. This extended the advertising-supported model of Internet publishing into the traditional core of the personal computer software market.

浏览器获得了安装扩展程序的能力，扩展程序是能够执行特定任务或加速特定云应用程序性能的小代码包。随着技术的发展，允许部分下载云应用程序，以便用户在暂时离线时继续编辑文档，在线办公套件变得更加有用。一个流行的扩展程序允许 Google Docs 套件完全离线运行，打开和关闭本地存储的文档。为了适应向云应用程序的转变，HTML 本身随后从一种简单的页面描述语言扩展为针对交互式应用程序优化的平台。

Browsers gained the ability to install extensions, small packages of code able to perform specific tasks or accelerate the performance of particular cloud applications. Online office suites became more useful as technologies were developed to allow cloud applications to be partially downloaded so that users could continue to edit documents when they were temporarily offline. One popular extension allowed the Google Docs suite to run completely offline, opening and closing documents stored locally. In recognition of the shift to cloud applications, HTML itself was subsequently extended from a simple page description language to a platform optimized for interactive applications.

Chrome 和 Chromebook

Chrome and Chromebooks

Firefox 表明微软对浏览器市场的垄断是可以逆转的，但对 Internet Explorer 的致命一击来自谷歌。谷歌推出的一系列基于 Web 的新应用程序（如 Gmail、谷歌地图和谷歌文档）都依赖于 Ajax 编程技术。现有浏览器运行复杂的 JavaScript 代码速度缓慢且不可靠。谷歌内部的一小群 Firefox 开发人员开始开发一款针对交互式应用程序进行优化的新浏览器。谷歌 Chrome 于 2008 年推出，具有典型的极简主义视觉设计以及无与伦比的稳定性和性能。到 2012 年，它已取代 Internet Explorer 成为使用最广泛的浏览器，在撰写本文时，它占据了浏览器市场的 70% 左右，而微软和 Firefox 各占 10% 左右。微软于 2019 年放弃了这场斗争，宣布其浏览器今后将基于 Chrome 技术，而不是尝试生产自己的速度更快但可能不兼容的页面渲染引擎。

Firefox showed that Microsoft’s monopolization of the browser market was reversible, but the knockout blow against Internet Explorer came from Google. Its stream of new Web-based applications like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Docs relied on Ajax programming techniques. Existing browsers ran their complex JavaScript code slowly and unreliably. A small team of Firefox developers within Google began to put together a new browser, optimized for interactive applications. Google Chrome was launched in 2008, offering a characteristically minimalist visual design and unmatched stability and performance. By 2012, it had overtaken Internet Explorer as the most widely used browser, and at the time of writing it has about 70 percent of the browser market, whereas Microsoft and Firefox each has around 10 percent. Microsoft abandoned the fight in 2019, announcing that its browser would henceforth be based on Chrome technology rather than attempting to produce its own faster but potentially incompatible page-rendering engine.

Google 利用 Chrome 的成功以及 Web 浏览器作为交互式应用程序的强大客户端的出现，重新推出了网络计算机的概念。其 Chromebook 设计于 2011 年发布，被联想、三星和惠普等公司采用，作为廉价、易于管理的笔记本电脑的基础。它们运行 Chrome 操作系统，这是 Linux 的衍生产品，经过简化并针对 Web 进行了优化。用户登录 Google 帐户并使用 Google 应用程序处理安全地保存在 Google 服务器中的在线数据。Gmail 和 Google 日历等应用程序即使在用户离线时也可以处理下载的数据，但 Chromebook 的设计几乎完全是当连接到互联网时使用的。学校热情地采用了它们，因为它们的购买和拥有成本低、安全性高以及对学生可用应用程序的控制力是传统笔记本电脑的强大优势。